A WOMAN IN CHINA NEW TRAVEL BOOKS Through Unknown Nigeria. JOHN R. RAPHAEL. 15s. net. Life in an Indian Outpost. MAJOR CASSERLY. 12s. 6d. net. The Old East Indiamen. E. KEBLE CHAT- TERTON. 12s. 6s. net. Through the South Seas with Jack London. MARTIN JOHNSON. 10s. 6d. net. In the Cockpit of Europe. A Story of Mace- donian Strife. W. H. CRAWFURD PRICE. 10s. 6d. net. Morocco. PIERRE LOTI. 7s. 6d. net. T. WERNER LAURIE Ltd. 8 Essex Street, Strand, London A WOMAN IN CHINA BY MARY GAUNT 1 1 AUTHOR OF 'ALONE IN WEST AFRICA," "THE UNCOUNTED COST," ETC. LONDON T. WERNER LAURIE LTD. 8 ESSEX STREET, STRAND CONTENTS / CHAPTER I ACROSS THE OLD WORLD PAGE My grandmother's curios — Camels and elephants — Dr Morrison — Chinese in Australia — Feared for his virtues — Racial animosity — Great Northern Plain — • A city of silence — A land of exile — The Holy Sea — Frost flowers on a birch forest — Chaos at Man- churia and Kharbin — Japanese efficiency — A Peking dust storm . . . 1-18 CHAPTER II A CITY OF THE AGES Chien Men Railway Station— Driver Chow—" Urgent speed in high disdain " — Peking dust storm — Joys of a bath — The glories of Peking- — The Imperial City — The Forbidden City — Memorial arches — The observ- atory— The little Tartar princess — Life in the streets — Street stalls — A mercenary marriage — Courtly gentlemen J9-39 CHAPTER III THE WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON The mud walls of Kublai Khan — Only place for a com- fortable promenade — The gardens on the walls — Guarding the city from devils— The dirt of the Chinese — The gates— The camels— In the Chien Men •— — The patient Chinese women' — The joys of living in a walled city— A change in Chinese feeling . . 40-55 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER IV THE LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING PAG* A forgotten tragedy — The troops — " Lest We Forget " — The fortified wall— " No low-class Chinese "—The last thing in the way of insults — A respecter of power — Racing stables — Pekin s' 'amuse — Chinese gentle- man on a waltz — Musical comedy — The French of the Far East — Chances of an outbreak — No wounded . 56-75 CHAPTER V THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS A good republican — The restricted Empire of the Manchus — Condign punishment — Babylon — An adventurous Chinaman— The entrance to the Forbidden City— The courtyards of Babylon — A discordant and jarring note — Choirs of priests — A living Buddha — " The Swanee River " — The last note in bathos — Palace eunuchs — Out of hand — Afternoon tea — The funeral procession — The imperial bier — Quaint and strange and Eastern • 7^-97 CHAPTER VI A TIME OF REJOICING The charm of Peking— A Chinese theatre— Electric light — The custodian of the theatre — Bargaining for a seat — The orchestra — The scenery of Shakespeare — Realistic gesture — A city wall — A mountain spirit — Gorgeous dresses — Bundles of towels — Women's gallery — Armed patrols— Rain in April— The food of the peasant — Famine — The value of a daughter — God be thanked 98-112 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER VII ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD PAGE Courteous Americans — Nankou Pass — Beacon towers — Inaccessible hills — " Balbus has built a wall " — Tiny towns — "Watchman, what of the night! " — Deserted watch-towers — Thoughtful Chinese waiter — Ming tombs — Chinese carrying chair — Stony way — Greatest p'ia lou in China — Amphitheatre among the barren hills — Tomb of Yung Lo — Trunks of sandal- wood trees — Enterprising Chinese guard . . . 113-129 CHAPTER VIII TWO CHARITIES The manufacturing of the blind — " Before born " — The Rev. Hill Murray— " The Message "—Geography- Marriage — A brave little explorer — Massacre of the blind — Deposits of one tael — A missionary career — The charitable Chinese — A Buddhist Orphanage — Invitation to a funeral — An intellectual abbot — The youngest orphan — Pity and mercy .... 130-150 CHAPTER IX A CHINESE INN The start for Jehol — Tuan — A Peking cart — Chinese roads — A great highway — Chances of camping out — " Room for ten thousand merchant guests " — Human occupancy — Dust of ages — Eyes at the window — Catering for the journey — The Chinese chicken, minced 151-163 CHAPTER X THB TUNGLING A Peking cart as a cure for influenza — Difficulties of a narrow road — The dead have right of way — The unlucky women — Foot binding — " Beat you, beat you "—Lost luggage—" You must send your hus- band " — Letter-writing under difficulties — A master- less woman — Malanyu — Most perfect place of tombs in the world 164-183 * CONTENTS CHAPTER XI A WALLED CITY PA Oft Numerous walled towns — The dirt of them — T'ung Chow — Romance of the evening light — My own little walled city — The gateways — Hospitable landlady — Bald heads — My landlady's room — A return present — " The ringleaders have been executed " — Summary Justice — To the rescue of the missionaries at Hsi An Fu — The Elder Brother Society — Primitive method of attack and defence — The sack of I Chiin . . . 184-211 CHAPTER XII THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE The crossing of the Lanho — A dust storm — Dangers of a new inn — Locked in — Holy mountain — Ruined city — My interpreter — A steep hill — The barren woman — Unappetising food — The abbot — The beggar — burning incense — The beauty of the way . . . 212-226 CHAPTER XIII IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS Etiquette of the Chinese cart — Ruined city — The building of the wall — The advice of a mule — A catastrophe — The failing of the Peking cart — Beautiful scenery — Industrious people — The posters of the mountains — Inn yards — The heads of the people — Mountain dogs — Wolves — A slum people — Artistic hands — " Cavalry "—The last pass 227-251 CHAPTER XIV " TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " Missionary compound — Prayer — Reputed dangers of the way — The German girl — Midwife — The Bible as a guide — " My yoke is easy, My burden is light " — A harem — Helping the sick and afflicted — A case of hysteria — Drastic remedies — Ensuring a livelihood — " Strike, strike " — Barbaric war-song— The Chinese soldier— The martyrdom of the Roman Catholic priest 252-272 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XV A VISIT TO THE TARTAR GENERAL PAGE Hsiung Hsi Ling, Premier of China — Preparations for a call — A cart of State — An elderly mule — Waiting in the gate — The yamen — Mr Wu, the secretary — " Hallo, Missus ! " — The power of a Chinese General — " Plenty robber, too much war " — Ceremonial farewell — A cultivated gentleman — Back to past ages for the night 273-282 CHAPTER XVI A PLEASURE-GROUND OF THE MANCHUS A return, call — Ceremonies — A dog-robbing suit — Difficulties of conversation — A treat for the amah — The British Ambassador at Jehol in the eighteenth century — The last stages of decrepitude — Glories of the park — The bronze temple — A flippant young Chinese gentleman — " Ladies' temple " — Desolation and dirt and ruin — " Happiness Hall " — Examining a barbarian ......... 283-299 CHAPTER XVII THE VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS Legend of the birth of Ch'ien Lung — A valley of temples — Wells — A temple fair — Hawking — Suicide's rock — Five hundred and eight Buddhas — The Po-Ta-La — Supercilious elephants — Steep steps — Airless temple — The persevering frog — Bright-roofed Temple — Tea at the Temple of the great Buddha— The Yuan T'ing — Ming temple outside Peking 300-320 CHAPTER XVIII IN A WUPAN The difficulties of the laundry — A friend in need — A strange picnic party — The authority of the parent — Travelling in a mule litter — Rain — A frequented xii CONTENTS PAGE highway — Yellow oiled paper — Restricted quarters — Dodging the smoke — ''What a lot you eat! " — Charm of the river — Modest Chinamen — The best- beloved grandchild — The gorges of the Lanho — The Wall again — Effect of rain on the Chinaman — The captain's cash -box — A gentleman of Babylon — Lanchou ......... 321-340 CHAPTER XIX A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON The question of squeeze — Batter fingers for the boatmen — An array of damp scarecrows — Ox carts — Pre- historic wheels — A decadent people — Beggars — The playing of a part — A side show — Cumshaw . . 341-349 CHAPTER XX THE WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT The heat of Peking — The wall by moonlight — Tongshan — " Your devoted milkman " — The eye of the mistress — A little fort — In case of an outbreak — The Temple of the Sleeping Buddha — A runaway bride — The San Shan An — My own temple courtyard — The missing outfit — The Language Officer — Friends in need 350-368 CHAPTER XXI FROM THE SAN SHAN AN An old temple — Haunted — Wolf with green eyes — Lone- liness— Death of missionaries — Fear — Sanctuaries — " James Buchanan " — Valiant farmers — Autumn tints — Famous priest — Sacrifice of disciples — Tree conserving — Camels at my gate — Servants — " Cook book " — Enchanted hills — Cricket cages — Kindly people — The fall of Belshazzar — Hope for the future 369-390 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Author at the Ming Tombs .... Frontispiece Street In Chinese City Facing page 4 Camels outside South-western Watch-tower, Peking . . . ,,4 A Manchu Woman ...... ,, 14 The Ha Ta Men from the Wall ... „ 14 Guard-house in Imperial City .... ,,22 A Wall and Gate of the Imperial City . „ 22 Watering Streets, Peking .... „ 28 Astronomical Instruments .... ,, 28 Courtyard of Temple of Confucius ... ,,32 " Lest we forget " ,,32 Gate on the Wall, Peking „ 36 The Ha Ta Men from the Wall ... „ 36 Path on Top of Wall, Peking .... ,, 42 Catapult Stones on the Wall .... ,, 42 Soldiers on the Wall ,, 46 Catapult Stone on, the Wall .... „ 46 Camels outside the South-western Gate . . ,, 50 Camels by the Ha Ta Men .... ,, 50 Inside the Curtain Wall of the Chien Men . ,,54 Camels outside South-western Wall, Peking . „ 54 Entrance to British Legation .... ,,58 Astronomical Instruments on the Wall . ,, 58 Ramp leading to top of Tartar Wall ... ,, 64 German Fort on the Wall .... ,, 64 South-eastern Watch-tower, Peking ... ,, 70 A Fort of the British Legation .... ,, 70 Peking from the Wall in Winter ... ,, 78 xiii xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Entrance to the Forbidden City .... Facing page 78 A Path in/ the Grounds of the Winter Palace . ,,84 A Secluded Corner of the Winter Palace . ,,84 Camels in Morison Street .... ,, 90 Making Cakes, Street in Peking ... ,, 90 The Chien Men from the Curtain Wall . ,, 94 P'ia Lou near the American Legation . ,, 94 Gilded Shop-front, Peking .... ,, 98 Corner in Peking ,, 98 Gathering in Kaoliang for Threshing . ,, 108 A Threshing-floor ,, 108 The Great Wall of China ,,114 Temple in Tomb of Yung Lo . . . . ,, 114 The Nankou Pass „ 118 Gateway in the Wall, Nankou Pass . . . ,, 118 P'ia Lou at Entrance to Holy Way . . . ,, 122 Holy Way, Ming Tombs ,, 122 A Window in a Tower of the Great Wall . ,, 126 Marble Elephant on the Holy Way ... ,, 126 Mission to the Blind, Peking .... ,, 132 Girls at Mission to the Blind .... ,, 132 Blind Boys coming out of School ... ,, 138 Blind Boys Playing at " Cat and Mouse " ,, 138 Missionary Compound, looking West . ,, 146 Festive Entrance to Buddhist Orphanage . . ,, 146 Leaving the " Wagons Lits " for the Mountains ,, 154 A Street Stall ,,154 Inn Yard, Peking Cart in Foreground . . ,, 162 Gossiping ,, 162 Tug-of-war, Buddhist Orphanage ... „ 174 Missionary Compound, looking East . . ,, 174 At foot of Holy Mountain ,, 182 Entrance to the late Dowager Empress's Tomb ,, 182 Outside a Walled City „ 188 Gate of a Walled City 188 Dead Gods at Tsung Hua Chou ... ,,196 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv Temple Courtyard at Tsung Hua Chou . . Facing page 196 North-west corner of Wall, Pao Ting Fu . ,, 200 A Coolie in the Street, Tsung Hua Chou . ,, 200 A Temple set in/ the Trees . . . . ,, 212 Crossing the Lanho . . . , . . ,, 212 Steps up to the Nine Dragon Temple . ,, 220 Steps up to the Nine Dragon Temple . . ,, 220 Entrance to Nine Dragon Temple ... ,, 224 Carrying Water to Nine Dragon Temple . ,, 224 Through the Great Wall into Inner Mongolia ,, 230 Peking Cart Upset ... ... ,, 230 Inn Yard, Litter with mules waiting to be loaded ,, 236 Inn Yard in the Mountains, My Carts . . ,, 236 Street in Pa Kou ,, 246 "Cavalry" ,,246 Manchu Woman and Child in Missionary Compound ...... ,, 262 Manchu and Chinese Women in Missionary Compound ,, 262 Bridge in Park ,,276 Emperor's Theatre, Jehol ,, 276 Pavilions on Bridge across Lake, Jehol . . „ 280 A Boat-house in the Park ,, 280 Lake in Park, Jehol ,, 284 End of Lake in Park, Jehol .... ,, 284 Lake in Park, Jehol ,, 288 Emperor's Bedroom ,, 288 Golden Mountain and Source of Jehol River . ,, 292 Mr Wu at the Entrance to the Temple . ,, 292 Women's Temple, Jehol ,, 296 " Happiness Hall" ,,296 Pavilions on Lake, Jehol }> 298 Women's Bathing-place ,, 298 Lamaserie ,, 302 Carts at the Fair „ 302 Entrance to Lamaserie ..... M 306 xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Doorway in a Temple in the Valley . . . Facing Page 306 Temple at the Top of Lamaserie . . . ,, 310 Farm-house above the Marble Priest . . . ,, 310 Bright-roofed Temple ,,314 Corner of Bright-roofed Temple . . . ,, 314 Yuan T'ing Round-roofed Tibetan Temple , ,, 318 Ming Temple outside Peking .... ,, 318 A Raft of Railway Sleepers on the Lanho . ,, 326 A Mule-litter, by the Lanho .... ,, 326 A Fair Wind on the Lanho .... ,, 330 My Boat and Crew ,, 330 Going to the Dragon Boat Feast ... ,, 338 Cook Stall .,338 A Mixed Team ,, 346 A Wayfarer ,, 346 The Fort in the Compound at Tongshart . ,, 352 Entrance to House, Tongshan .... ,, 352 Place of Tombs below San Shan An ... ,, 358 Valley of the San Shan An ,, 358 View from Temple ,, 362 Place of Tombs below the look-out place . ,, 362 A Courtyard of the Temple .... ,, 368 Tiffin at the San Shan An ,,368 Bridge across Moat, Pao Ting Fu . . . ,, 372 Curtain Wall of West Gate, Pao Ting Fu ,, 372 Seated Elephant, Po Ta La . . . . „ 376 Marble Priest on Tableland at San Shan An . ,, 376 Camels at my Gate, San Shan An . . . ,, 380 Visitors at the San Shan An .... ,, 380 Cook and Boy, Temple and Courtyard . ,, 384 The Look-out Place, Abandoned for the Winter , ,, 384 A WOMAN IN CHINA CHAPTER I ACROSS THE OLD WORLD My grandmother's curios — Camels and elephants — Dr Morrison — Chinese in Australia — Feared for his virtues — Racial animosity — Great Northern Plain — A city of silence — A land of exile — The Holy Sea — Frost flowers on a birch forest — Chaos at Manchuria and Kharbin — Japanese efficiency — A Peking dust storm. WHEN I was a little girl and was taken to see my grandmother, she set out for my amusement, to be looked at but not touched by little fingers, various curios brought home by my grandfather from China in the old days when he was a sailor in the Honour- able East India Company's service ; beautifully carved ivory chessmen, a model of a Chinese lady's foot about three inches long, dainty mother-of-pearl counters made in the likeness of all manner of strange beasts, lacquer boxes and ivory balls; models of palankeens in ivory, and fans that seemed to me, brought up in the somewhat rough-and-ready surroundings of a new country, dreams of loveliness. The impression was made, I felt the fascination of China, the fascination of a thing far beyond me. Like the pretty things, so out of my reach it seemed that I did not even add it to the list of places I intended to I A 2 A WOMAN IN CHINA visit when I grew up, for even then my great desire was to travel all over the world ; I was born with the wander fever in my blood, but unfortunately with small means of satisfying it. As I grew older I used to read every travel book I could get hold of, and later on when I began to live by my pen I got into the habit of gauging my chances of seeing a country by the number of books written about it. China, judged by this standard, fell naturally into the place assigned to it by my grandmother's curios ; for from the days of Marco Polo men have gone up and down the land, painfully, sorrowfully, gladly, triumphantly, and at least half of them seem to have put pen to paper to describe what they have seen. Was it likely there would be anything left for me to write about? Then one bright Sunday morning when the sun was shining, as he does occasionally shine in England, the spirit moved me to go down the Brighton line to spend a day with Parry Truscott, a fellow story- teller. The unkind Fates have seen to it that I live alone, and arriving at Victoria that bright morning I felt amiably disposed and desirous of exchanging ideas with somebody. In the carriage I had chosen were already seated two nicely dressed women, and coming along the platform was a porter with hot- water bottles. The morning was sharp and the opportunity was not to be lost, I turned to them and asked them if they would not like a hot-water bottle. Alas! Alas! Those women towards whom I had felt so friendly evidently did not reciprocate *ny feelings. In chilly accents calculated to discourage the boldest — and I am not the boldest — they gave me to understand that they required neither the hot- ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 3 water bottle nor my conversation, so, snubbed, I retired to the other side of the carriage and amused myself with my own thoughts and the sunshine and shadow on the green country through which we were passing. Half the journey was done when I saw, to my astonishment, a sight that is not often seen in the Sussex lanes, a train of camels and elephants marching along. It seemed to me something worth seeing, and entirely forgetting that I had been put in my place earlier in the morning I cried, " Oh, look ! Look ! Camels and elephants ! " Those two ladies were a credit to the English nation. They bore themselves with the utmost pro- priety. What they thought of me I can only dimly guess, but they never even raised their eyes from their papers. Of course the train rushed on, the camels and elephants were left behind, and there was nothing to show they had ever been there. Then I regret to state that I lay back and laughed till I cried, and whenever I felt a little better the sight of those two studious women solemnly reading their papers set me off again. When I got out at Hassocks they did not allow themselves to Jook relieved, that perhaps would have been expressing too much emotion before a stranger who had behaved in so eccentric a fashion, but they literally drew their skirts around them so that they should not touch mine and be contaminated as I passed. There is always more than one side to a story ; how I should love to hear the version of that journey told by those two ladies ; doubtless it would not in the faintest degree resemble mine. And yet there really were camels and elephants. And so it occurred to me why not go to a country and try and 4 A WOMAN IN CHINA write about it, although many had written before. If the gods were kind might I not find a story even in China. Meanwhile one of my brothers had married a sister of Dr Morriso^ and I had come into touch with the famous Times correspondent, an Australian like myself, and when he came to England he used to come and see me, and we talked about China. When I met him again after my elephant and camel experience I asked his opinion, would it be worth my while to go to China? He was quite of opinion it would, more, he and his newly-wedded wife gave me a cordial invitation to stay with them, and the thing was settled. I decided to go to Peking. Accordingly, on the last day of January in the year of Our Lord 1913, I left Charing Cross in a thick fog for the Far East. It is a little thing to do, to get into a train and be whirled eastward. There is nothing wonderful about it and yet — and yet — to me it was the beginning of romance. I was bound across the old world for a land where people had lived as a civilised people for thousands of years before we of the West emerged from barbarism, for a country which the new nation from which I have sprung regards with peculiar interest. Australia has armed herself. Why? Because of China's millions to the north. Australia has voted solid for a white Australia, and rigidly excluded the coloured man. Why? Not because she fears the Kanaka who helped to develop her sugar plantations, but because she fears the yellow man and his tireless energy and his low standard of living. When I was a child my father, warden of the STREET IN CHINESE CITY. CAMELS OUTSIDE SOUTH-WEST WATCH TOWER, PEKING. (See page 48) ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 5 goldfield where he was stationed, was also, by virtue of his office, protector of the Chinese; and Heaven knows the unfortunate Chinese, industrious, hard- working men of the coolie class from Amoy and Canton, badly needed a protector. Many a time have I seen an unfortunate Chinaman, cut and bleeding, come to my father's house to claim his protection. The larrikins, as we used to call the roughs, had stoned him for no reason that they or anyone else could understand but only because he was a Chinaman. Now I understand what puzzled and shocked me then, and what shocks me still. It is that racial animosity that is so difficult to explain to the home-staying Englishman: that animosity which is aroused because, subconsciously, the white man knows that the yellow man, in lowering the standard of living, will literally take away much of the bread and all chance of butter from the com- munity in which he has a foothold. Here I was going to see the land whence had come that subservient, patient, hard-working coolie of my childhood. And the wonder of that rush across the old world, the twelve days' railway journey that takes us from the most modern of civilisations to the most ancient — it grew upon me as we crossed the great northern plain — historic ground whereon the great battles of Europe have been fought. The people in the train were dining, supping, playing cards, sleeping, and the cities we passed in the dark- ness seemed mere clusters of dancing lights, such lights as I have seen after rain on many a hot and steamy night in West Africa. When morning dawned we had passed Berlin and were slowly leav- ing the packed civilisation behind us. A grey low 6 A WOMAN IN CHINA sky was overhead and there were clumps of fir-trees. Dirty snow was in the hollows, and there were long, straight roads drawn with a ruler as they are in Australia, with little bare trees at regular intervals on either side, and then again dark fir woods and rain everywhere. Soon we had passed the frontier and were in Russia, and I felt I could not rush through without one glimpse of it, so I stayed one little week in Moscow, and I shall always be glad I did, though there, for the first time in my life, I was in a country where my nationality did not count, and it was not a pleasant feeling. But Moscow is the city of a dream. I arrived there at night to streets all covered with a mantle of snow. The many lights shone clear in the keen, cold, windless air and the sleighs drawn by sturdy little horses glided over the white snow as silently as if they had been moving shadows. And when morning came it was snowing. Softly, softly, fell the flakes and the city was a city of silence, white everywhere, and when the sun came out dazzling, sparkling white, only the cupolas of the many churches — Moscow in the heart of holy Russia has sixteen hundred — were golden or bright blue, or dark vivid green, for the snow that hid the brilliant roofs could not lie on their rounded surfaces. Above the cupolas are crosses, and from the crosses hang long chains, and ever and again on the silence rang out the musical clang of some deep-toned bell. But it is the silence that impresses. The bells were but incidental, trifling — the silence is eternal. The snow fell with a hush, there was no rush nor roar nor crash of storm, but every snowflake counted. The little sledges were half buried in it, the drivers in their fur-edged caps ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 7 and blue coats girt in at the waist with a red sash or silver embroidered band, shook it out of their eyes and out of their great beards and brushed it from their shoulders ; in every crevice of the old grey walls of the Kremlin it piled up. A dream city ! A city of silence ! ! The snow reigned, deadening all sound save the insistent bells that rang to the glory of God, and the cawing of the black and grey crows that were everywhere. What have scavenger crows to do in this beautiful city? They were there flying round the churches, darting down the spotless roads, gathering in little con- claves, raising their raucous voices as if in protest against the all-embracing silence. They were the discordant note that emphasised the harmony. Cold, was .there ever such cold? The air crackled with it. It cut like a knife, for all its clear purity. At every street corner I passed as I drove to the railway station were little piles of fir logs, and little braziers were burning, glowing red spots of brightness where the miserable for a moment might warm their hands. They say one should leave Moscow in summer to cross the Siberian plain, because then there are the flowers — such flowers — and the green trees, and the sunshine, and you may see the road — the long and sorrowful road — along which for years the exiles have passed. I have heard many complaints about the weariness of the journey in winter. There is nothing to be seen say the grumblers. For these luckless ones I have the sincerest pity. They have missed something goodly. I suppose for most of us life, as it unfolds itself, is a disappointing thing, full of bitterness and — worse still — of unattainable 8 A WOMAN IN CHINA desires, but of one thing I shall always be glad, that I crossed the Siberian plain in the heart of winter, and saw it beneath its mantle of spotless snow. Possibly I may never see it in summer, but its winter beauty is something to be remembered to my dying day. And yet it is a land of exile. Even in childhood I had read of the sufferings of those who have been sent there ; and my conception of the land and the reality before my eyes as I rushed through it in an express train were always starting up in comparison with each other. A land of exile, and yet from the plains of Eastern Russia in the west to the frozen hills round Kharbin in the east it is a lovely land. It is a plain, of course — a plain thousands of miles in extent, and the vastness and the beauty of the snow-clad solitudes cry aloud in praise to the God Who made them. Overhead, far, far away, is the great arch of the deep blue sky, clear, bright, entic- ing, delightful, with no threat in its translucent depths such as one knows is latent in tropical lands, and below is the snow-clad plain, stretching far as the eye can see, bathed in the brilliant sunshine. From the desert and the mountains in the south it stretches away north to the frozen sea ; and from the busy towns of the Baltic in the west, in close touch with modern civilisation, to the busy toiling millions of the East with their own civilisation that comes from a dateless antiquity ; and in all those thousands of miles it changes its character but little. But first there were the Urals. I had looked upon them as mountains all my life ; and I saw one even- ing only some very minor hills, deep in snow, with steep sides covered with a forest of fir and leafless ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 9 larch, dark against the white background ; next morning all trace of them was gone, and we were in Asia. On the station platforms were men and women, Cossacks of the west, Buriats of the centre, Tartars of the east, Christians, Buddhists, Moham- medans; there was little difference in outward appearance, muffled as they were against the cold which was often thirty degrees below freezing-point. The men were in long-skirted coats, and the women in short petticoats and high boots, so that it would have been difficult to tell one from the other save that on their heads the men wore fur caps, ragged, dirty, but still fur,r while the women muffled them- selves in shawls still dirtier. Though they looked as if they had not given water a thought from the day they were born, I, the daughter of a subtropical land, could forgive them. Who could face water in such a biting atmosphere ? I sympathised but I did not desire to go too close when we passengers bundled out for exercise on the station platforms, at least most of us did. Some preferred bridge. " My God ! my God ! " said an old military man with unnecessary fervour. "What are the idiots getting out for. I go one no trump, partner. Where is my partner? The donkey '11 be slipping and hurt- ing himself on those slippery steps next and then our four '11 be spoilt," and he looked round for sympathy. Someone murmured something about seeing the country, but he shrivelled him with his scorn. " Seeing the country ! This is the eleventh time I've been across and I never even look out if I can help myself. Know better. Oh, here you are, 10 A WOMAN IN CHINA partner," slightly mollified. " I've gone one no trump, and there are two hearts against you." It was a curious thing to me that most of the passengers in that luxuriously equipped train, with every comfort for the asking save fresh air, grumbled so continuously. It seems to be the accepted thing that the traveller who travels luxuriously should grumble. Our old soldier considered himself a much-injured individual when the attendants did not know by instinct when he required lemon and tea and when whisky-and-soda ; and the breaking up of a game of auction bridge because the tables were wanted for dinner reduced him to blackest despair. The hordes which through the ages have swept, conquering, westwards probably never com- plained, their lives were too strenuous, either they fought and died and were at peace, or they fought and conquered, and small discomforts were swallowed up in the joy of victory. It is left to these modern travellers flying eastward at a rate that would have made the old-time nomads think of witchcraft and sorcery to make a fuss about trifles, to complain of the discomforts and hardships of the long journey across the old world. I knew the country. In the days when I was a little girl studying my map with diligence I should have counted it a joy unspeakable if I had thought that ever I should be crossing Siberia; crossing the great rivers, the Obi, the Yenesei and the Angara that were then as far away and distant to me as the river that Christian crossed to gain high Heaven; that I should watch the sledges travelling in the sunlight along their hard, frozen surfaces, I to whom a small piece of ice on a saucer of water, which by ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 11 luck we might get if there happened to be an exceptionally cold night in the winter, was a wonder and a delight. I suppose my joy would have been tempered could I have known how many years must pass over my head before this wonderful thing would happen, for in those days five-and-twenty seemed extraordinarily old, and I was very sure that at thirty life would not be worth living. And I have passed that terrible age limit and have missed most things I have set my heart upon, but still there are moments when life is well worth living. Strange and bitter is the teaching of the years — bitter but kindly, too. We passed Irkutsk where East and West meet, a great city with church spires and cupolas and build- ings overlooking the broad and frozen Angara. We raced along by leafless woods, by barren stretches of spotless snow, and sometimes the swiftly running river was piling up the ice in great slabs and blocks and girding and fretting at its chains, and sometimes it was flowing free for a few miles, the only flowing river in all the long, long journey from the old Russian capital. The water was black, and dark, and cold, looking far colder than the ice. The duck rose, leaving long wakes on the water; then there was a little steam, and then a greater steam in the clear sunlight, but by the time we reached Lake Baikal, the Fortunate Sea, the Holy Sea, the frost had gripped the water again, the lake was a sheet of white, and the afternoon sun shone on hills snow- clad on the eastern side. The hills, hardly worth mentioning when one thinks of the great plain across which we had come, are down to the very ice edge. The great lake, the eighth in the world, is 12 A WOMAN IN CHINA but a cleft in them, and the railway track runs on a ledge cut out of the steep hill-side overhanging its waters, waters that were now smooth and white and hard as marble. Here and there little jetties run out; here and there were boats, useless now, close against them; here and there were piles of wood that would be burned up before the thaw. It had been Siberia for days but Baikal struck the true Siberian note. Here there were convicts too. Some alterations or repairs were being carried out on the line, and drab-coloured convicts were working at them, guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. Siberia! Siberia of the story-teller! On every little point of vantage stood a soldier with high fur cap, looking out over the men working below him, and they, splitting wood, digging holes in the iron-bound ground, paused in their labours and lifted their faces to the passing train. Did it speak to them of home and culture and love and happiness and freedom, or were they merely the brutal criminal justly pun- ished, and the peasant, poor and simple, here because the Government want workers, and that he cannot pay his taxes is excuse enough. The sun was brilliant but it was cold, bitter cold, such cold as I had never dreamed of. Men's breath came like solid steam, and the hair on their faces was fringed with white hoar-frost. The earth was so hard frozen that they were building great fires to thaw it before working ; and as the darkness fell the flames leapt yellow and red and blue, glowing spots of colour against the whiteness and the night. And with the night came the full moon high in the clear sky, a disc of dazzling silver. The Providence that ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 13 has guided my wandering footsteps surely gives sometimes with a lavish hand; that which I have sought earnestly with many tears is not for me, but this still moonlight winter's night in Siberia was mine, and all the world that we were rushing past was fairyland. There was in it nothing sordid, nothing unclean, nothing sorrowful. And it was still fairyland when I awoke in the morning to a brilliant sun shining upon a forest of dainty, delicate, graceful birches with every branch, every little twig, clothed in sparkling white, for the sunbeams were caught and reflected a million times on the frost flowers, and the whole forest was a thing of beauty and wonder that to see once is to remember for a lifetime. It is worth living to have seen it. I have seen great rivers and mountains and been awed by mighty forests, I have watched the thundering surf and listened to the roar of the tornado; but this was something quite different. Awe was not the predominant feeling, but joy — joy that such beauty exists, that I was alive to look upon it. Behind us lay a long, long trail. We in the rushing train represented the onward march of a mighty civilisation, but all around us in the brilliant winter sunshine lay the limitless plains of Siberia, and the birch forest, and the snow, and the frost, and the beauty that is not made with hands, that defies civilisation, that was before civilisation, and we were moved to raise our eyes with the psalmist and cry aloud : " How wonderful are thy works, O Lord!" But I did not appreciate the beauty of the winter or the moonlight when they roused me at three o'clock in the morning at Manchuria because my luggage 14 A WOMAN IN CHINA had to be examined at the Chinese Customs. The scanty lights on the station, the silver moon in the heaven above lit up the platform as we passengers of the train de luxe made our way to the baggage- room along a path between heaped-up frozen snow and ice, and the difference in temperature between that station platform and the carriages from which the hot air gushed was perhaps one hundred degrees. The reek from those carriages went up to heaven, but the sudden change was cruel. Our pessimistic old soldier wailed loudest. " My God! My God! this is unbearable!" and I won- dered why, because on his way through the world he must have encountered worse things than bitter cold that has only to be borne for a few minutes. Probably that was the reason. If he had had something really hard to bear he would very likely have said nothing about it. The baggage-room was confusion, worse confounded, and nobody seemed to know what was being looked for, opium, or arms or both. This place is the Port Said of the East, and people from all corners of the earth were gathered round their belongings. There were groups of Chinese with women and children and weird bundles ; there were the very latest dressing- cases and despatch-boxes from Bond Street and Piccadilly; there was a babel of tongues, Russian and French and German and English and the unknown tongues of Asia. China, China at last, and I was within two days of my destination. And when the day dawned we had left beautiful Siberia behind, and instead there were flat lands, deserts of stones and dry earth, with but little snow to veil the apparent barrenness, and hills first with s2 5 ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 15 scanty trees, but growing more and more barren as we approached Kharbin. It looked desolate, cold, uninviting. The land may be rich, it is I am told, but when I passed there was no outward sign of that richness; the covering of beautiful white was gone, there was only a patch or two of snow here and there in the hollows, and the brilliant sunshine was like gleams of light on steel. At Kharbin they examined our baggage again — why I know not — and again it was chaos, chaos in the bitter cold with the mercury many degrees below freezing-point and screeching demons with a Mongolian type of countenance, muffled in furs and rags that seemed the cast-off clothes of all the nations of the earth, hauled the luggage about, pored over tickets and made entries in books with all the elaborate effort of the unlearned, and finally marked the unhappy boxes with great sprawling figures in tar or some such compound. "Four roubles, twenty kopecks." Why I had to pay I know not, that was beyond me, but I was glad to get off so lightly, for had they seen fit to ask me one hundred roubles, I should have been equally helpless. I was thankful to get out of the cold back to my warm and evil-smelling coupe. And at Ch'ang Ch'un I fairly felt I had crossed half the world, and the oldest old world greeted me with active winter. I did not know then, as I do now, how wonderful a thing is a snowstorm in Northern China. Here the snow was falling, fall- ing. We had left behind us the great spaces of the earth, and come back to agriculture. Through the whirling snowflakes, little low-roofed houses, sur- rounded with walls of stone with little portholes for 16 A WOMAN IN CHINA guns — the Japanese block-houses, for Japan holds Manchuria by force of arms — alternated with farm- houses, with fences of high yellow millet stalks. The doors were marked with brilliant red paper with inscriptions in Chinese characters upon it — a spot of brightness amidst the prevailing white that lent tone and colour to the picture. Here it was that the Russians and the sons of Nippon had been at death-grips, and we who were in this train realised why the Eastern nation had won. At Kharbin and at Manchuria, with things managed by Chinese, reigned confusion. That we ever emerged with a scrap of luggage seemed to be more by good luck than good management. From Ch'ang Ch'un to Mukden the little men from the islands in the eastern sea run the railway, and they know what they are about; everything is in order, and everything marches without apparent effort. They bought this land with their blood, and they are holding it now with the sure grip that efficiency gives. At Mukden a blizzard was raging, and the old Tartar City was veiled in snow. When the snow went, the sunshine was bleak and bright, and every- where, far as the eye could see, stretched tilled fields, bare of every green thing. Flatter and flatter grew the land. It was half ice and half earth, and the little sledges that were hitherto drawn by ponies were now drawn by men. Once we had left behind the Siberian fir, there was not a green thing to be seen all the way to Peking. The earth of the fields was streaked, dark brown and lighter brown; there were bare trees with their promise for the future ; and once we were in China proper, there were the ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 17 graves — graves solitary, and graves in clusters — just neatly kept little heaps of earth piled up and pointed, something like an ant-hill. The air was clear and sparkling, the outlook was wide. We passed town after town, and where on the Siberian border the names of the stations were in Russian and Chinese, and so equally unintelligible, here in China they were in English and Chinese. " Do you like China ? " I asked a Frenchman who sat opposite me at tiffin. " No," said he frankly. " It is too English." But he laughed when I said that naturally I considered that a distinct point in the Chinaman's favour. A wind rose, and it was as if the brown earth were literally lifted into the air. Everything was smothered in a dust storm. The atmosphere was heavy as a London fog, a fog that had been dried by some freezing process. The air was full of dry brown particles that shrivelled the skin, and parched the lips, and made me weigh in my mind the respec- tive merits of a soft, moist air, and a clear and spark- ling one. I had left London in a yellow fog that veiled the tops of the houses, and lent an air of mystery to the street in the near distance^ I arrived at Peking in a typical North China dust storm. We came through the wall, the wall of the Chinese city, that until I had seen the Tartar wall looked grey, and grim, and stern, and solid, and I wondered at the curved tiled roofs, and the low houses, and the great bare spaces that go to make up the city. The East at last, the Far East! All across the old world I had come ; and here on a bitter cold February afternoon, with a wild wind blowing, the train drew up outside the Tartar wall, the wall that B 18 A WOMAN IN CHINA Kublai Khan and the Ming Emperors built in the capital city of the civilisation that was old when the Roman legions planted their eagles in the marshes of the Thames. I had reached China, the land of blue skies and of sunshine ; the land of desperate poverty and of wonderful wealth ; the land of triumph, and of martyrdom, and of mystery. What was it going to hold for me ? CHAPTER II A CITY OF THE AGES Chien Men Railway Station— Driver Chow—" Urgent speed in high disdain " — Peking dust storm — Joys of a bath — The glories of Peking — The Imperial City — The Forbidden City — Memorial arches — The observatory — The little Tartar princess — Life in the streets — Street stalls — A mercenary marriage — Courtly gentlemen. I LOOKED out of the carriage window as the train ran through the Chinese city on its way to the Chien Men railway station, and wondered what the future was going to be like, and I wondered aloud. "How will I get on?" Opposite me sat an amusing young gentleman with a ready tongue. " Oh you'll be all right," said he. " The Chinese '11 like you because you're fat and o " and then he checked himself seeing, I suppose, the dawning wrath in my eyes. The Chinese admire fat people and they respect the old, but I had not been accus- tomed to looking upon myself as old yet, though I had certainly seen more years than he had, and as for fat — well I had fondly hoped my friends looked upon it as a pleasing plumpness. With these chastening remarks sinking into my soul, we rolled into the railway station. The railways in China, with a few exceptions, have been built by the English or French— mostly 19 20 A WOMAN IN CHINA by the English — and are managed to a great extent on European lines, so that arriving at the railway station in Peking does not differ very much from arriving at any other great terminus, save for the absence of cabs ; but I imagine there must be differ- ences, and that those who run the lines have little difficulties to contend with that would not occur on the London and North Western for example. " DEAR SIR," — wrote a stationmaster once to the locomotive superintendent — " I have, with many tears, to call your attention to your driver, Chow, who holds urgent speed in high disdain." The locomotive superintendent, without any tears, investigated the charge against this driver, Chow. The line was worked on the staff system. No driver could leave a station without giving up the staff he had brought in, and receiving the corres- ponding one for the next stretch of line. The staff — to follow the directions — is to be handed to the driver by the stationmaster, but the stationmaster on this, and I expect on many other occasions, for the Chinese are past-masters in the art of delegating work to someone else, had handed the staff to a coolie and gone about his pleasure. Now Chow evidently had a grudge against him, for, I fear me, no one believed in his altruism. He insisted on the strict letter of the law and declined to take the staff until it was handed to him by the important man himself, and he kept the whole train waiting, while that worthy was searched for, and hauled out of the particular gambling-house he most affected. When the gentleman appeared, furious and angry, on the platform, Chow calmly lifted up his staff to effect A CITY OF THE AGES 21 an exchange, and he swore on investigation he had forgotten that the end the stationmaster received had been reposing for all the long wait upon the nearly red-hot boiler ! That the stationmaster burnt his fingers is a mild statement of the case. There was a wild wind blowing when I stepped out of the train and looked around me at the frown- ing walls, at least I looked as much as I could, for the day was bitterly cold, and most of the ground was in the air. A London fog was nothing to it, that is soft and still and filthy, this was hard and gritty, moving fast and equally filthy, and every one of the passengers was desperately anxious to exchange the bleak railway station for the warmth and comfort and cleanliness to be found between four walls. I was just as anxious as anybody else, but by the time I had collected my luggage the awful facts were borne in on me that all the people with whom I had made friends on the way across, were rapidly departing, and that there was no one to meet me. Peking was wonderful, I knew it was wonderful ; there were such walls as I had never even dreamt of, towering above me, but I was not able to rise above the fact that I was in a strange city, among quaint- looking people who spoke an unknown tongue, and that I did not know where to go. And the Morri- sons' invitation had been most cordial. I had rejected all offers of help, because I was so sure someone from their house would be there to meet me, now I seized the last remaining passenger who could speak a little Chinese, and, with his help, got a hand-cart for my gear, drawn by two ragged men, and a rickshaw for myself — this man haulage, this 22 A WOMAN IN CHINA cheapness of human labour, made me realise more quickly than anything else could have done, that I had really arrived in the Eastern world — and after a little debate with myself I started for Dr Morri- son's. I had been asked to stay there, and I felt it would be rude to go to the hotel, but as we drove through the streets I thought — as much as the dust, the filthy dust — that the violent gusts of wind were blowing in my face would allow — not of the wonders of this new world upon which I was entering, but of how I should announce myself to these people who apparently were not expecting me. I had such a lot of luggage too! At last the coolies stopped opposite a door guarded by two stone lions, and as I got out of my rickshaw, entered the porch, and stood outside a little green wicket gate, the doorkeeper stepped out of his room and looked at me. He was clad all in blue cotton and he had an impassive face and just enough English for a doorkeeper. No, Missie was not at home, he announced calmly. "Master?" I asked frantically, but he shook his head, Master was out too. Here was a dilemma. I would have gone straight to the hotel I had discovered Peking boasted, but I feared they might think it rude. I made him understand I would come in and wait a little, and my luggage, my dilapidated luggage, for Kharbin and Manchuria had been hard on it, was carried into the courtyard of the first Chinese house I had ever seen. But I wasn't thinking of sight-seeing then ; I was wonder- ing what I should do. I questioned the No. i boy, as I subsequently found he was, a pleasant-faced little man in a long blue coat or dress, whichever GUARD-HOUSE IN IMPERIAL CITY. A WALL AND GATE OF THE IMPERIAL CITY A CITY OF THE AGES 23 you please to call it, and a little round silk cap suppressing his somewhat wild hair. I learned afterwards that some students, enthusiastic for the new regime, had caught him the day before and shorn off his queue with no skilful hands. It was his opinion that Missie was not expecting a guest, but he suggested I should come inside and have some tea. The thought of tea was distinctly com- forting, and so was his attitude. It suggested that unexpected guests were evidently received with hospitality, and dirty as I felt myself to be, I went in and sat down to a meal of tea and cakes. " I makee room ready chop chop," announced the boy, and I drank tea and ate cakes, wondering whether I ought not to stop him, and say he had better wait till his mistress came home. And I felt so horribly dirty, too. Then there came in a lady who also looked at me with surprise. She had come to tea with Mrs Morrison, and she was quite sure Mrs Morrison was expecting no guest. This was awful. I became so desperate that nothing seemed to matter, and I went on eating cake and drinking tea till presently the No. i boy came in again, and calmly announced: " Barf ready." And I had just been told that my hostess did not expect me! I looked at the lady sitting opposite me, I looked at the boy, and I considered my very dirty and dishevelled self. I had not even seen a bath since I left Moscow. I had come through the Peking streets in a Peking dust storm, and I felt a bath was a temptation not to be resisted, wherever that bath was offered; so I arose and followed the boy, and 24 A WOMAN IN CHINA presently Mrs Morrison, coming into her own court- yard, was confronted by a heap of strange luggage, and a boy standing over it with a feather duster, no mere feather duster could have coped with the dirt upon it, but a Chinese servant would attack a hornet's nest with one ; it is his badge of office. He looked up at her and remarked, in that friendly and con- versational manner with which the Chinese servant makes the wheels of life go smoothly for his Missie when he has her alone. " One piecey gentleman in barf ! " She came and knocked at the bedroom door when I was doing my hair and feeling much more able to face the world, and made me most cordially welcome, and, when I was fully dressed and back in the drawing-room, Dr Morrison appeared, and said he was glad to see me, and no one mentioned that my arrival had been unexpected, till a week later, when the letter I had written saying by what train I was coming, turned up. I stayed with Dr Morrison and his pretty young wife for close on a fortnight, and they gave me most kindly hospitality, and not only did I view the wonders of Peking, make some acquaintances and friends, but saw just a little of the peculiarities of Chinese servants. They are good, there is no gainsaying it, but sometimes they did surprise me. Dr Morrison has a secretary, young and slim and clever, who in the early days of our acquaintance- ship was wont very kindly to come over and help me in the important matter of fastening up dresses at the back. One evening, being greatly in need of her assistance, I sent across the courtyard to her, and the startled young lady was calmly informed by A CITY OF THE AGES 25 a bland and smiling boy as if it were the most natural thing in the world: " One piecey gentleman wanchee in he's bedroom." At first I don't think I appreciated Peking. It left me cold, and my heart sank, for I had come to write about it, to gain material perhaps for a novel, and this most certainly is a truth, you cannot write well about a place unless you either love or hate it. Still, I have always had a great distaste for dashing through a country like an American tourist, and so I settled down at the Wagons Lits Hotel, surely the most cosmopolitan hotel in the world. And then by slow degrees my eyes were opened, and I saw. Blind, blind, how could I have been so blind ? It makes me troubled. Have other good things been offered me in life? And have I turned away and missed them? The wonder of what I have seen in Peking never palls, it grows upon me daily. "Walk about Zion and go round about her . . . consider her palaces that ye may tell it to the generation following." So chanted the psalmist, not so much, perhaps, for the sake of future genera- tions, but because her beauty and charm so filled his soul that his lips were forced to song. "Tell the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks." Far back in the ages, a nation great and civilised on the eastern edge of the plain that stretches half across the world, builded themselves a mighty city. Peking first came into being when we Western nations, who pride ourselves upon our intense civilisation, were but naked savages, hunters and nomads, and she, spoiled and sacked and looted, 26 A WOMAN IN CHINA taking fresh masters, and absorbing them, Chinese and Tartar, Ming and Manchu, has endured even unto the present day. To-day, the spirit of the West is breathing over her and she responds a little, ever so little, and murmurs of change, yet she remains the same at heart as she has been through the ages. How should she change? She is wedded to her past, she can no more be divorced from it than can the morning from the evening. There is something wonderful and antique about any walled city, but a walled city like Peking stands alone. The very modern railway comes into the Chinese City through an archway in the wall, and the railway station, the hideous modern railway station, lies just outside the great wall of the Tartar City. There are three cities in Peking, indeed for the last few years there have been four — four distinct cities. There is the Imperial City, enclosed in seven miles of pinkish red wall, close on twenty feet high, and in the Imperial City, the very heart of it, behind more pinkish red walls, is the For- bidden City, where dwell the remnant of the Manchu Dynasty, the baby emperor and his guardians, the women, the eunuchs, the attendants that make up such a gathering as waited in bygone days on Darius, King of the Medes, or Ahasuerus, King of Babylon. Here there are spacious courtyards and ancient temples and palaces, and audience halls with yellowish-brown tiled roofs, extensive lakes, where multitudes of wild duck, flying north for the summer, or south for the winter, find a resting-place, watch- towers and walls, and tunnelled gateways through those walls. When through the ages the greatest artists of a nation have been giving their minds to A CITY OF THE AGES 27 the beautifying of a city, the things of beauty in that city are so numerous that it seems impossible for one mind to grasp them, to realise the wonder and the charm, especially when that charm is exotic and evasive. The Imperial City, all round the Forbidden City, consists of a network of narrow streets and alleys lined with low buildings with windows of delicate lattice-work, and curved tiled roofs. Here, hidden away in silent peaceful courtyards shaded by gnarled old trees, are temples guarded by shaven priests in faded red robes. Their hangings are torn and faded, the dust lies on their altars, and the scent of the incense is stale in their courts, for the gods are dead ; and yet because the dead are never forgotten in China — China that clings to her past — they linger on. Here are shops, low one-storied shops, with fronts richly carved and gilded, streets deep in mud or dust, narrow alley-ways and high walls with mysterious little doors in them leading into secluded houses, and all the clatter and clamour of a Chinese city, laden donkeys, mules and horses, rickshaws from Japan, glass broughams weirdly reflecting the glory of modern London, and blue, tilted Peking carts with studded wheels, such as have been part and parcel of the Imperial City for thousands of years, all the life of the city much as it is outside the pinkish red walls, only here and there are carved pillars and broad causeways that, if the stones could speak, might tell a tale of human woe and human weariness, of joy and magnificence, that would surpass any told of any city in the world. And outside the Imperial City, hemming it in, in a great square fourteen miles round, is the Tartar 28 A WOMAN IN CHINA City with splendid walls. Outside that again, form- ing a sort of suburb, lies to the south the Chinese City with thirteen miles of wall enclosing not only its teeming population, but the great open spaces and parks of the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Agriculture. But though the Tartar City and the Chinese City are distinct divisions of Peking, walled off from each other, all difference between the people has long ago disappeared. The Tartars conquered the Chinese, and the Chinese, patient, industrious, persistent, drew the Tartars to them- selves. But still the walls that divided them endure. The Tartar City is crossed by broad highways cutting each other at right angles, three run north and south, and three run east and west, they are broad and are usually divided into three parts, the centre part being a good, hard, well-tended road- way, while on either side the soil is loose, and since the streets are thronged, the side ways are churned up in the summer into a slough that requires some daring to cross, and in the winter — the dry, cold rainless winter, the soil is ground into a powdery dust that the faintest breeze raises into the air, and many of the breezes of Northern China are by no means faint. The authorities try to grapple with the evil — at regular intervals are stationed a couple of men with a pail of muddy water, which with a basket-work scoop they distribute lavishly in order to try and keep down the rising dust. But the dust of Peking is a problem beyond a mere pail and scoop. This spattering of water has about as much effect upon it as a thimbleful of water flung on a raging fiery furnace. Still, in spite of the mud and the dust, the streets WATERING STREETS, PEKING. ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS. A CITY OF THE AGES 29 are not without charm. They are lined with trees ; indeed I think no city of its size was ever b.etter planted. When once one has realised how treeless is the greater part of China, this is rather surprising. For look which way you will from the wall in the summer and autumn, you feel you might be looking down upon a wood instead of a city ; the roofs of the single-storied houses are hidden by the greenery, and only here and there peeps out the tiled roof of a temple or hall of audience with the eaves curving upwards, things of beauty against the background of green branches. Curiously enough it is only from the walls that Peking has this aspect. Once in the network of alley-ways it seems as if a wilder- ness of houses and shops were crowding one on top of the other, as if humanity were crushing out every sign of green life. This is because there is to all things Chinese two sides. There is the life of the streets, mud-begrimed, dusty, seething with humanity, odoriferous, ragged, dirty, patient, hard- working; and there is a hidden life shut away in those networks of narrow alley-ways. There is many a gateway between two gilded shop fronts, some black Chinese characters on a red background set out the owner's name and titles, and, passing through, you are straightway admitted irtfo courtyard after courtyard, some planted with trees, some with flowering plants in pots — because of the cruel winter all Chinese gardens in the north here are in pots, sometimes with fruit-trees thick with blossom or heavy with fruit, and in the paved courtyards, secluded, retired as a convent, you find the various apartments of a well-arranged Chinese house ; there are shady verandas, and dainty lattice- 80 A WOMAN IN CHINA work windows looking out upon miniature land- scapes with little hills and streams and graceful bridges crossing the streams. But only a favoured few may see these oases. For the majority Peking must be the wide-open boulevards and narrow hu t'ungs, fronted by low and highly ornamental houses, and shops so close together that there is no more room for a garden or growing green life than there is in Piccadilly. True there are trees in these boulevards, in Morrison Street, in Ha Ta Men Street, in the street of Eternal Repose that cuts them at right angles, but they would be but small things in the mass of buildings were it not for the courtyards of the private houses and temples that are hidden behind. There are, too, in the streets p'ia lous or memorial arches, generally of three archways with tiled roofs of blue or green or yellow rising in tiers one above the other, put up in memory of some deed the Chinese delight to honour. And what the Chinese think worthy of honour, and what the Westerner delights to honour are generally as far apart, I find, as the Poles. In Ha Ta Men Street, however, there is a p'ia lou all of white marble, put up by the last Manchu Emperor in memory of gallant Baron von Kettler, done to death in the Boxer rising, but there, I am afraid, Chinese appreciation was quickened by European force. We are apt to think that European influence in China is quite a thing of yesterday, that Baron von Kettler was the first man of note who perished in the inevitable conflict, and yet, when I looked at the eastern wall of the city, I was reminded, with a start, that European influence dates long before A CITY OF THE AGES 31 the Boxer time, long before the days of the Honour- able East India Company, and many must have been the martyrs. There on the eastern wall stands the observatory, and clear-cut against the bright blue sky are astronomical instruments with dragons and strange beasts upon them. They wer£ placed there by the Jesuits in the middle of the seventeenth century, and I know that those priests could not have attained so much influence without a bitter baptism of blood. They stand out as land- marks, those orbs and astrolabes, up and down the wall, even as they have come down through the centuries ; monuments, as enduring as any Chinese p'ia lou, of faith and suffering ; but the Jesuits were not the first to place astronomical instruments there. The Chinese were not barbarians by any means, though by some curious freak we Westerners have passed them in the race for civilisation, and, as long ago as the days of Kublai Khan, they had an obser- vatory here by the wall. On the ground below, in a tree-shaded courtyard, there is an astrolabe with a beautiful bronze dragon for a stand, the dust-laden air of Peking has polished and preserved it, so that I can see but little difference between it and the newer instruments on the platform above — newer and yet two hundred and fifty years old. And beyond the observatory in the north-east corner of the city is the Lama Temple, a temple with picturesque, yellowish-brown tiled roofs and spacious courtyards, in which are quaint old gnarled trees, and building after building in that curious state that is part beautiful, part slovenly decay, ruled over by hundreds of shaven, yellow-robed monks among whom, they say, it is not safe for a 32 A WOMAN IN CHINA woman to go by herself. There is the Temple of Confucius, with surely the most peaceful courtyard in the world, and there are other temples, temples with courtyards and weird, twisted coniferous trees in them that are hundreds of years old, pagodas, and bells, and towers, and to each and all is attached many a story. Overlooking the great causeway that runs along in front of the Forbidden City, west past the south main gate, are two towers, one to the north in the Forbidden City, and one to the south without its walls ; and of these two towers they tell a story of tenderness and longing. Hundreds of years ago, when the Tartars were first subject to the Ming Emperors, part of their tribute had to be one of their fairest princesses, who became a member of the Emperor's harem. The poor little girl's inclinations were not con- sidered, not even now is the desire of a woman considered in China, and the little Tartar girl was bound to suffer for her people. She might or might not please the Emperor, but whether she did or not the position of one who might share the Emperor's bed was so high that she might never again hold communion with her own kin. And then there came one little Tartar princess, who, finding favour with her lord, summoned courage to tell him of her love and longing. But there are some rules that not even the mighty Emperor of China may abro- gate, and he could not permit her ever again to mingle with the common herd. One thing only could he do, and that he did. He built the northern tower looking over the causeway, and the southern tower on the other side. On the one tower the poor A CITY OF THE AGES 33 little secondary wife, lonely and weighted by her high estate, might stand so that she could see her people on the other, and, though they were too far apart for caress or spoken word, at least they could see each other and know that all was well. I do not know whether many of the people who throng the streets from morning to night, and long after night has fallen, ever give a thought to the little Tartar princess. The shops, most of them open to the streets, are full, and on two sides of the main roadways are set up little stalls for the sale of trifles. Curiously enough, and I suppose it denotes poverty and lack of home life, about half these stalls are given up to the cooking and selling of eatables. In Ha Ta Men Street, in Morrison Street, in the street of Eternal Repose, that is as if we should say in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, and the Hay- market, and just outside the gates in the Chinese City, on the path that runs between the canal and the Tartar wall, you may see these same little stalls. Here is a man who sells tea, keeping his samovar boiling with shovelfuls of little round hard nodules, coal dust made up with damp clay into balls ; here is another with a small frying-pan in which he is baking great slabs of wheaten flour cakes, and selling them hot out of the pan ; here is another with an earthenware dish full of an appetising-looking stew of meat and vegetables, with a hard-boiled egg or two floating on top ; another man has big yellow slabs of cake with great plums in them, another has sticks of apples and all manner of fruits and vege- tables done into sweetmeats. And here as it is cooked, alfresco, do the people, the men, for women are seldom seen at the stalls, come and buy, and c 84 A WOMAN IN CHINA eat, without other equipment than a basin, a pair of chop sticks or a bone spoon like a ladle supplied by the vendor. They sell, and make, and mend Chinese footgear at these stalls too ; there is a fortune-teller, one who will read your future with a chart covered with hiero- glyphics spread out on the bare ground; there is the letter-writer for the unlearned; there are primi- tive little gaming-tables ; and there are cheap, very cheap cigarettes and tobacco of brands unknown in America or Egypt. I have said there is a lack of home life, and thought, like the arrogant Westerner I am, that the Chinese do not appreciate it, but only the other day I heard a little story that made me think that the son of Han, like everyone else, longs for a home and someone in it he can call his very own. One day a missionary teacher heard an outcry behind her, and turning, saw a blind woman, unkempt and filthy and whining pitifully. " Oh who will help me ? Who will help me ? " she cried, shrinking away from the dog that was making dashes at the basket she carried for doles. The missionary called off her dog, and reassured the woman. The dog would not hurt her. He was only interested in the food in her basket. "Then," said she, " I went on, because I was in a hurry, but as I went I thought how horrible the woman looked, and that I ought to go back and tell her, 'God is Love/" So the missionary stopped and talked religion to that blind beggar, and told her to come up to the Mission Station. She looked after her soul, but also, out of the kindness of her heart, she looked A CITY OF THE AGES 85 after her body, and when the beggar was established, a woman of means with a whole dollar — two shillings — a week, she realised that God was indeed Love, and became a fervent Christian. "Clean," I asked, being of an inquiring turn of mind, and her saviour laughed. " Perhaps you wouldn't call her clean, but it is a vast improvement on what she was." The woman wasn't young, as Chinese count youth in a woman, she wasn't good-looking, she wasn't in any way attractive, but she was a woman of means, and presently her guardian was embarrassed by an offer from a man of dim sight, for the hand and heart of her protegee. The missionary was horri- fied. The woman was married already. The would-be bridegroom, the prospective bride, and all their friends smiled, and seemed to think that since her last alliance wasn't a real marriage it should be no bar. Still the lady was firm, the woman had lived with the man for some years and it was a marriage in her humble opinion. So the dis- appointed candidates for matrimony went their way. However, a few weeks later the woman came to her guardian with a face wreathed in smiles, "that thing," she said, she didn't even call him a man, that thing was dead, had died the day before, and there was now no reason why she should not marry again! There was no reason, and within ten days the nuptials were celebrated, and the blind woman went to live with her new husband. I asked was it a success and the missionary smiled. " Yes, it is certainly a success, only her husband complains she eats too much." 86 A WOMAN IN CHINA I said there were always drawbacks when a man married for money ! But as a matter of fact the marriage was a great success. I saw the happy couple afterwards, and the woman looked well-cared for and neat, and her husband helped her up some steps quite as carefully as any man of the West might have done. Truly the Fates were kind to the blind beggar when they put her in the way of that missionary. She is far, far happier probably than the bride of a higher class who goes to a new home, and, henceforward, as long as the older woman lives, is but a servant to her mother-in-law. True the husband had complained his new wife ate too much. But Chinese etiquette does not seem to think it at all the correct thing to praise anything that belongs to one. And for a husband to show affection for his wife, whatever he may feel, is a most extraordinary thing. The other day a woman was working in the courtyard of a house when there came in her husband who had been away for close on six months. Did they rush at one another as Westerners would have done? Not at all. He crossed the courtyard to announce himself to his master, and she went on with her work. Each carefully refrained from looking at the other, because had they looked people might have thought they cared for each other. And it is in the highest degree indelicate for a husband or wife to express affection for each other. In truth, once my eyes were opened, I soon grew to think that, from the point of view of the sightseer, there are few places in the world to compare with Peking, and the greatest interest lies in the people — the crowded humanity of the streets. Of course IP GATE ON THE WALL, PEKING. THE HA TA MEN FROM THE WALL. A CITY OF THE AGES 87 I have seen crowded humanity — after London how can any busy city present any novelty — and yet, here in Peking, a new note is struck. Not all at once did I realise it; my mind went groping round asking, what is the difference between these people and those one sees in the streets of London or Paris? They are a different type, but that is nothing, it is only skin deep. What is it then? One thing cannot but strike the new-comer, and that is that they are a peaceable and orderly crowd, more amenable to discipline, or rather they dis- cipline themselves better, than any crowd in the world. Not but that there are police. At every few yards the police of the New Republic, in dusty black bound with yellow in the winter, and in khaki in the summer, with swords strapped to their waists, direct a traffic that is perfectly capable of directing itself; and at night, armed with rifles, mounted bands of them patrol the streets, the most law- abiding streets apparently in the world. In spite of the - swarms of tourists, who are more and more pouring into Peking, a foreigner is still a thing to be wondered at, to be followed and stared at; but there is no rudeness, no jostling. He has only to put out his hand to intimate to the following crowd that he wishes a little more space, that their com- pany is a little too odoriferous, and they fall back at once, only to press forward again the next moment. Was ever there such a kindly, friendly nation? And yet — and yet — What is it I find wrong? They are a highly civilised people, from the Presi- dent who reigns like a dictator, to the humble rickshaw coolie, who guards my dress from the filth of the street. He will hawk, and spit, but he is as 88 A WOMAN IN CHINA courtly a gentleman as one of the bucks of the Prince Regent's Court, who probably did much the same thing. It dawned upon me slowly. These people have achieved that refinement we of the West have been striving for and have not attained as yet. It is well surely to make perfection an aim in life, and yet I feel something has gone from these people in the process of refining. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they can be trusted to keep order, and the hundredth probably not all the police in the capital could hold them. The very rickshaw coolies, when they fall out, trust to the sweet reason- ableness of argument, even though that argument Waste interminable hours. A European, an English- man or an American probably, comes hectoring down the street — no other word describes his attitude, when it is contrasted with that of the courteous Orientals round him. On the smallest provocation, far too small a provocation, he threatens to kick this coolie, he swings that one out of the way and, instead of being shocked, I am distinctly relieved. Here is an exhibition of force, restrained force, that is welcome as a rude breeze, fresh from the sea or the mountains, is welcome in a heated, scented room. These people, even the poorer people of the streets, are suffering from over-civilisation, from over-refinement. They need a touch of the primi- tive savage to make the red blood run in their veins. Not but that they can be savage, so savage on occasion, the hundredth occasion when no police could hold them, that their cruelty is such that there is not a man who knows them who would not keep the last cartridge in his revolver to save himself from the refinement of their tender mercies. A CITY OF THE AGES 89 But I did not make this reflection the first, or even the tenth time, I walked in the streets. It was a thing that grew upon me gradually. By the time I found I was making comparisons, the comparisons were already made and my opinions were formed. I looked at these strange men and women, especially at the small-footed women, and wondered what effect the condemning of fifty per cent of the population to years of torture had had upon the mental growth of this nation, and I raised my eyes to the mighty walls that surrounded the city, and knew that the nation had done wonderful things. CHAPTER III THE WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON The mud walls of Kublai Khan — Only place for a comfortable promenade — The gardens on the walls — Guarding- the city from devils— The dirt of the Chinese— The gates— The camels — In the Chien Men — The patient Chinese women — The joys of living in a walled city — A change in Chinese feeling. ARE they like the walls and gates of Babylon, I wonder, these walls and gates of the capital city of China. I thought so when first I saw them, and the thought remains with me still. Behind such walls as these surely sat Ahasuerus, King of Baby- lon ; behind such walls as these dwelt the thousands of serfs who toiled, and suffered, and died, that he might be a mighty king. They are magnificent, a wonder of the world, and it seemed to me that the men of the nation who built them must glory in them. But all do not. I sat one day at tiffin at a friend's house, and opposite me sat a Chinese doctor, a graduate of Cambridge, who spoke English with the leisurely accent of the cultivated Englishman, and he spoke of these mighty walls. " If I had my way," said he, " they should be levelled with the ground. I would not leave one stone upon another." And I wondered why. They shut out the fresh air, he said, but I wondered, in my own mind, whether he did not feel that they 40 WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 41 hemmed the people in, caged and held them as it were, in an archaic state of civilisation, that it is best should pass away. They can shut out so little air, and they can only cage and hold those who desire to be so held. Kublai Khan outlined the greater part of them in mud in the thirteenth century, and then, two hundred years after, came the Ming conquerors who faced the great Tartar's walls with grey Chinese brick, curtailing them a little to the north, and as the Mings left them, so are they to-day when the foreign nations from the West, and that other Asiatic nation from the East, have built their Legations — pledges of peace — beneath them and, armed to the teeth, hold, against the Chinese, the Legation Quarter and a mile of their own wall. Over fifty feet high are these Tartar walls, at their base they are sixty feet through, at their top they are between forty and fifty feet across, more than a hundred if you measure their breadth at the great buttresses, and they are paved with the grey Chinese bricks that face their sides. As in most Chinese cities, the top of the wall is the only place where a comfortable promenade can be had, and the mile-long strip between the Chien Men, the main gate, and the Ha Ta Men, the south-eastern gate — the strip held by the Legations — is well kept ; that is to say, a broad pathway, along which people can walk, is kept smooth and neat and free from the vegetation that flourishes on most of the wall top. This vegetation adds greatly to its charm. The mud of the walls is the rich alluvial deposit of the great plain on which Peking stands, and when it has been well watered by the summer rains, a 42 A WOMAN IN CHINA luxuriant green growth, a regular jungle, forces its way up through the brick pavement. The top of the wall upon a cool autumn day, before the finger of decay has touched this growth, is a truly delightful garden. It was my great pleasure to walk there, for there were all manner of flowering green shrubs and tall grasses, bound together by blooming morning glory, its cup-shaped flowers blue, and pink, and white, and white streaked with pink; there were even small trees, white poplar and the ailanthus, or tree of heaven, throwing out shady branches that afforded shelter from the rays of the brilliant sun. They are not adequate shelter, though, in a rainstorm. Indeed it is very awkward to be caught in a rain- storm upon the walls out of the range of the rick- shaws, as I was more than once, for in the hot weather I could never resist the walls, the only place in Peking where a breath of fresh air is to be found, and, since it is generally hottest before the rain, on several occasions I was caught, return- ing drenched and dripping. It did not matter as a rule, but once when I was there with a companion a more than ordinary storm caught us. We sheltered under an ailanthus tree, and as the wind was strong, umbrellas were useless. My com- panion began to get agitated. " If this goes on," said he, " I shan't be able to go out to-morrow. I have only one coat." He had come up from Tientsin for a couple of days. But for me the case was much more serious. I had on a thin white muslin that began to cling round my figure, and I thought anxiously that if it went on much longer I should not be able to go into the PATH ON TOP OF WALL, PEKING. CATAPULT STONES ON THE WALL. WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 43 hotel that day! However, the rain stopped as sud- denly as it had begun, the sun came out in all his fierceness, and before we reached the hotel I was most unbecomingly rough dried. Things are ordered on the Legation wall, the pathway between the greenery runs straight as a die, but beyond, on the thirteen miles of wall under Chinese care, the greenery runs riot, and only a narrow pathway meanders between the shrubs and grass, just as a man may walk carelessly from station to station ; and sometimes hidden among the greenery, sometimes standing out against it, are here and there great upright slabs of stone, always in pairs, relics of the old fortifications, for surely these are all that remain of the catapults with which of old the Chinese and Tartars defended their mighty city. The walls stand square, north and south, and east and west, only at the north-west corner does the line slant out of the square a little, for every Chinese knows that is the only sure way to keep devils out of a city, and certainly the capital must be so guarded. Whatever I saw and wondered at, I always came back to the walls, the most wonder- ful sight of a most wonderful city, and I always found something new to entrance me. The watch-towers, the ramps, the gates, the suggestion of old-world story that met me at every turn. In days not so very long ago these walls were kept by the Manchu bannermen, whose special duty it was to guard them, and no other person was allowed upon them, under pain of death, for exactly the same reason that all the houses in the city are of one story: it was not seemly that any mere commoner should 44 A WOMAN IN CHINA be able to look down upon the Emperor, and no women, even the women of the bannermen, were allowed to set foot there, for it appeared that the God of War, who naturally took an interest in these defences, objected to women. Now little companies of soldiers take the place of those old-world bannermen. They look out at the life of the city, at their fellows drilling on the great plain beyond, at the muddy canal, that is like a river, making its way across the khaki-coloured plain, that in the summer is one vast crop of kaoliang — one vivid note of green. Wonderful fertility you may see from the walls of the Chinese capital. Looking one feels that the rush of the nations to finance the country is more than justified. Surely here is the truest of wealth. But the soldiers on the walls are children. China does not think much of her soldiers, and the language is full of proverbs about them the reverse of complimentary. " Good iron is not used for nails," is one of them, " and good men do not become soldiers." How true that may be I do not know, but these men seemed good enough, only just the babies a fellow-countryman talking of them to me once called them. They know little of their own country, less than nothing of any other. I feel they should not be dressed in shabby khaki like travesties of the men of Western armies, tunics and sandals and bows and arrows would be so much more in keeping with their sur- roundings. And yet so small are they, like ants at the foot of an oak, that their garb scarcely matters, they but emphasise the vastness of the walls on which they stand; walls builded probably by men differing but little from these soldiers of New China. WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 45 I photographed a little company one bright day in the early spring — it is hardly necessary to say it was bright, because all days at that season, and indeed at most seasons, are brilliantly, translucently bright. My little company dwelt in a low building made up apparently of lattice-work and paper close to the observatory, and evidently word went round that the wonderful thing had been done, and, for all the charm of the walls, it was not a thing that was often done. I suppose the average tourist does not care to waste his plates on commonplace little soldiers in badly made khaki. When next I appeared with the finished picture all along my route soldiers came and asked courteously, and plainly, for all I knew not one word of their tongue, what the result had been. I showed them, of course, and my following grew as I passed on. They knew those who had been taken, which was lucky, for I certainly could not tell t'other from whichz and, when I arrived at their little house, smiling claimants stretched out eager hands. I knew the number I had taken and I had a copy apiece. And very glad I was, too, when they all ranged up and solemnly saluted me, and then they brought me tea in their handleless cups, and I, unwashed though I felt those cups were, drank to our good-fellowship in the excellent Chinese tea that needs neither sugar nor milk to make it palatable. There were other people, too, on the walls in the early springtime, coolies clearing away the dead growth that Bad remained over from the past summer. It was so light it seemed hardly worth gathering, and those gleaners first taught me to realise something of the poverty of China, the desperate poverty that 46 A WOMAN IN CHINA dare not waste so much as a handful of dead grass. They gathered the refuse into heaps, tied it to each end of their bamboos, and, slinging it over their shoulders, trudged with it down one of the ramps into the city. Ever and again in my peregrina- tions, I would come across one of them sitting in the sun, going over his padded coat in the odd moments he could spare from his toil. For the lower-class Chinese understands not the desira- bility of water, as applied either to himself or his clothes, and, as he certainly never changes those clothes while one shred will hold to another, the moment must arrive, sooner or later, when his dis- comfort is desperate, and something must be done. He is like the wonks, the great yellow scavenger dogs that haunt the streets of Peking and all Chinese cities, he sits down and scratches himself, and goes through his clothes. At least that was my opinion. A friend of mine who had served for some years in the interior with the great company, the British and American Tcbacco Company, that, with the missionaries, shares the honour of doing pioneer work in China, says I am wrong, Chinamen don't mind such a little thing as that. " Those carters," said he, " in the interior as it gets colder just pile one garment on over another, and never take anything off, and by February — phew! If you want to smell a tall smell" — I said I didn't, the smells of Peking were quite recondite enough for me — but he paid no attention — "you just go and stand over the k'ang in a room where five or six of them are crowded together." And the carters, it seems, are highly respectable, sometimes well-to-do men. I felt I had a lot to SOLDIERS ON THE WALL. CATAPULT STONE ON THE WALL. WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 47 learn about the Chinese, these men whose ancestors had built the walls. Of course there are gates in the walls, nine gates in all in the Tartar City, great archways with iron- studded doors and watch-towers above. I count it one of the assets of my life, that I have stood under those archways, where for centuries has ebbed and flowed the traffic of a Babylonish city, old world still in this twentieth century. They are lighted with electric light now, instead of with pitch-pine torches, but no matter, the grey stones are there. The gate of a city like Peking is a great affair. Over every archway is a watch-tower, with tiled roofs rising tier above tier, and portholes filled with the painted muzzles of guns. Painted guns in the year of our Lord 1914! So is the past bound up with the present in China ! And these are not entirely relics of the past like the catapult stones. In the year 1900, when the Boxers looted the Chinese City, and the Europeans in the Legations north of the Tartar wall trembled for their lives, the looters burned the watch-tower on the Chien Men, all that was burnable of it, and, when peace was restored, the Chinese set to work and built their many-tiered watch-tower, built it in all the glory of red, and green, and blue, and gold, and in the portholes they put the same painted cannon that had been there in past ages, not only to strike terror into the enemy, but also to impress the God of War with an idea of their preparedness. And yet there was hardly any need of sham, for these gateways must have been formidable things to negotiate before the days of heavy artillery, for each is protected by a curtain wall as high and as thick as the main wall, and in 48 A WOMAN IN CHINA them are archways, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three ways out, but always there is a great square walled off in front of the gate so that the traffic must pause, and may be stopped before it passes under the main archway into the city. And these archways look down upon a traffic differ- ing but little from that which has passed down through all the ages. Here come the camels from Mongolia, ragged and dusty, laden with grain, and wool, and fruit, and the camels from the Western Hills, laden with those "black stones" that Marco Polo noted seven hundred years ago, and told his fellow-countrymen they burned for heating purposes in Cambulac. You may see them down by the Ha Ta Men prepar- ing to start out on their long journey, you may see them in the Imperial City, bringing in their wares, but outside the south-western gate, by the watch- tower that guards the corner of the wall, they are to be seen at their best. Here, where the dust is heaped high under the clear blue sky of Northern China, come slowly, in stately fashion, the camels, as they have come for thousands of years. The man who leads them is ragged in the blue of the peasant, his little eyes are keen, and patient, and cunning, and there is a certain stolidity in his demeanour; life can hold but few pleasures for him, one would think, and yet he is human, he cannot go on superior, regardless of outside things, as does his string of beasts of burden. The crenel- lated walls rise up behind them, the watch-tower with its painted guns frowns down upon them, and the camels, the cord fastened to the tail of the one in front, passing through the nostrils of the one WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 49 behind, go steadily on. They are like the walls, they are older than the walls, possibly they may outlive the walls; silently, surely, in the soft, heaped-up dust they move ; so they came a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, before the very dawn of history. These Babylonish gates have for me a never- ending attraction. I look and look at the traffic, and always find something new. One sunny morn- ing I went and sat in the Chien Men, just to watch the never-ending throng that made their way back- wards and forwards between the Chinese and the Tartar Cities. I took up my position in the centre of the great square, large as Waterloo Place, enclosed by the curtain wall, and the American Guard looked down upon me and wondered, for they watch the traffic day in and day out, and so long as it is peaceful, they see nothing to remark upon in it. There are three gates in the curtain wall, the one to the south is never opened except for the highest in the land to pass through, but from the east gate the traffic goes from the Tartar to the Chinese City, through the west it comes back again, meeting and passing under the great archway that leads to the Tartar City. And all day long that square is thronged. East and west of the main archway are little temples with the golden-brown roofs of all imperial temples, the Goddess of Mercy is enshrined here, and there are bronze vases and flowering plants, and green trees in artistic pots, all going to make a quiet little resting-place where a man may turn aside for a moment from the rush and roar of the city, burn aromatic incense sticks, and invoke good fortune for the enterprise on which he is 50 A WOMAN IN CHINA engaged. Do the people believe in the Goddess of Mercy, I wonder? About as much as I do, I suspect. The Chinaman, said a Chinese to me once, is the most materialistic of heathens, believing in little that he cannot see, and handle, and explain ; but all of us, Eastern or Western, are human, and have the ordinary man's desire for the pitiful, kindly care of some unseen Power. It is only natural. I, too, Westerner as I am, daughter of the newest of nations, burned incense sticks at the shrine of the Goddess of Mercy, and put up a little prayer that the work upon which I was engaged should be successful. Men have prayed here through the centuries. The prayer of so great a multitude must surely reach the Most High, and what matter by what name He is known. Besides the temples there are little guard-houses for the soldiers in the square ; guard-houses with delicate, dainty lattice-work windows, and there are signboards with theatre notices in Chinese on gay red and yellow paper. There are black and yellow uniformed military police, there are grey-coated little soldiers with just a dash of red about their shabby, ill-fitting uniforms, and there are the people passing to and fro intent on their business, the earning of a cash, or of thousands of dollars. The earning of a cash, one would think mostly, looking at many a thing of shreds and patches that passes by. To Western eyes the traffic is archaic, no great motors rush about carrying crowds at once, it consists of rickshaws with one or, at most, a couple of fares, of Peking carts with blue tilts and a sturdy pony or a handsome mule in the shafts, and the driver seated cross-legged in front, of longer carts CAMELS OUTSIDE THE SOUTH-WESTERN GATE. CAMELS BY THE HA TA MEN. WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 51 with wheels studded, as the Peking carts are, and loaded with timber, with lime, and all manner of merchandise, and drawn sometimes by three or four underfed little horses, but mostly by a horse or mule in the shafts and a mule or a donkey so far in front one wonders he can exert any influence on the traction at all. The rickshaw coolies clang their bells, men on bicycles toot their horns, every donkey, and most horses and mules, have rings of bells round their necks, and everyone shouts at the top of his voice, while forty feet up on the wall, a foreign soldier, one of the Americans who hold the Chien Men, is practising all his bugle calls. " Turn out, turn out. Mess, mess," proclaims the bugle shrilly above. " Clang, clang, clang," ring the rickshaw bells. A postman in shabby blue, with bands of dirty white, passes on his bicycle and blows his horn, herald of the ways of the West. A brougham comes along with sides all of glass, such as the Chinaman loves. In it is a man in a modern tall hat, a little out-of-date; on the box, are two men in grey silk, orthodox Chinese costume, queue and all, but alas for picturesqueness they have crowned their heads with hideous tourist caps, the mafoo behind on the step, hanging on to the roof by a strap, has on a very ordinary wideawake, his business it is to jump down and lead the horses round a corner — no self-respecting Chinese horse can negotiate a corner without assistance — and the finishing touch is put by the coachman, also in a tourist cap, who clangs a bell with as much fervour as a rickshaw coolie. Before this carriage trot out- riders. " Lend light, lend light," they cry, which is the Eastern way of saying " By your leave, by your 52 A WOMAN IN CHINA leave. My master a great man comes." After the coach come more riders. It may be a modern carriage in which Tie rides, but the important man in China can no more move without his outriders and his following, than could one of the kings or nobles of Nineveh or Babylon. More laden carts come in from the west, and the policeman, in dusty black and yellow, directs them, though they really need no directing. The average Chinese mind is essentially orderly, and never dreams of questioning rules. Is there not a stone exactly in the middle of the road under the great archway, and does not every man know that those going east must go one way, and those going west the other? What need for direction? An old- fashioned fat Chinese with shaven head and pigtail and sleeveless black satin waistcoat over his long blue coat comes along. He half-smothers a small donkey with a ring of jingling bells round its neck, a coolie follows him in rags, but that does not matter, spring is in the land, and he is nearly hidden by the lilac bloom he carries, another comes along with a basket strapped on his back and a scoop in his hand, he is collecting the droppings of the animals, either for manure or to make argol for fuel, a stream of rickshaws swerve out of the way of a blind man, ragged, bent, old, who with lute in one hand and staff in the other taps his way along. " Hsien Sheng, before born," he is addressed by the coolies directing him, for his affliction brings him outward respect from these courteous people. In the rickshaws are all manner of people : Manchu women with high head-dresses in the form of a cross, highly painted faces and the gayest of WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 53 long silk coats, shy Chinese women, who from their earliest childhood have been taught that a woman must efface herself. Their hair is decked with flowers, and dressed low on the nape of their necks, their coats are of soberer colours, and their feet are pitifully maimed. " For every small foot," says a Chinese proverb, " there is a jar full of tears." The years of agony every one of those women must have lived through, but their faces are impassive, smiling with a surface smile that gives no indication of the feelings behind. The Chien Men, because it opens only from the Tartar to the Chinese City, is not closed, but eight o'clock sees all the gates in the twenty-three miles of outer wall closed for the night, and very awkward it sometimes is for the foreigner, who is not used to these restrictions, for neither threats nor bribes will open those gates once they are shut. I remember on one occasion a young fellow, who had lingered too long among the delights of the city, found himself, one pleasant warm summer evening, just outside the Shun Chih Men as the gates of the Chinese City were closing. He wanted to get back to his cottage at the race-course but the guardians of the gate were obdurate. " It was an order and the gates were closed till daylight next morning." He could not climb the walls, and even if he could, the two ponies he had with him could not. He probably used up all the bad language at his command, if I know anything about him, and he grew more furious when he recollected he had guests coming to dinner. Then he began to think, and remembered that the railway came through the wall. Inspection showed him that there 54 A WOMAN IN CHINA were gates across it, also fast closed, and here he got his second wind, and quite a fresh assortment of bad language, which was checked by the whistle of an approaching train. Then a bright idea occurred to him. Where a train could go, a pony could go, and he stood close to the line in the darkness, instructed his mafoo to keep close beside him, and the moment the train passed, got on to the line and followed in its wake, regardless of the protests of raging gatekeepers. He got through the gate triumphantly, but then, alas, his troubles began, for the railway line had not been built with a view to taking ponies through the wall. There were rocks and barbed wire, there were fences, and there were mud holes, and his guests are wont to relate how as they were sitting down to table under the hospitable guidance of his No. i boy, there arrived on the scene a man, mud to the eyes — it was summertime when there is plenty of mud in the country round Peking — and silent, because no profanity of which he was capable could possibly have done justice to his feelings. Such are some of the joys of living in a Babylonish city. When I had sat an hour in the gate I rose to go, and the rickshaw coolie and I disagreed as to the fare. A rickshaw coolie and I never did agree as to the fare. Gladly would I pay double to avoid a row, but the coolie, taken from the Legation Quarter of Peking where the tourists spoil him, would complain and try to extort more if you offered him a dollar for a ten-cent ride, therefore the thing was not to be avoided. I did not see my way to getting clear, and a crowd began to gather. Then there came along a Chinese, a well-dressed young man. INSIDE THE CURTAIN WALL OF THE CHIEN MEN. I A CAMELS OUTSIDE SOUTH-WESTERN WALL, PEKING. WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 55 His long petticoats of silk were slit at the sides, he had on a silken jacket and a little round cap. He wore no queue, because few of the men of his generation, and of his rank wear a queue, and he spoke English as good as my own. "What is the matter?" I told him. "How much did you pay him?" "Forty cents." "It is too much," said he, and he called a policeman, and that coolie was driven off with contumely. But it marked a wonderful stride in Chinese feeling that a Chinese should come to the assistance of a foreigner in distress. Not very long ago he would have passed on the other side, scorning the woman of the outer barbarians, glad in his heart that she should be " done " even by one so low in the social scale as a rickshaw coolie, a serf of the great city these ancient walls enclose. CHAPTER IV THE LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING A forgotten tragedy— The troops—" Lest We Forget "—The fortified wall — " No low-class Chinese " — The last thing in the way of insults — A respecter of power — Racing stables — Pekin s' amuse — Chinese gentleman on a waltz — Musical comedy — The French of the Far East — Chances of an out- break— No wounded. " AT Canton a few years since," wrote Sir George Staunton, recording the visit of the first British Ambassador to the Emperor of China in 1798, "an accident happened which had well-nigh put a stop to our foreign trade. Evils of every kind fraught with this tendency are to be apprehended, and ought to be particularly guarded against, especially by a commercial nation. On some day of rejoicing in firing the guns of one of those vessels which navi- gates between the British settlements in India and Canton, but not in the employment of the East India Company, two Chinese, in a boat lying near the vessel, were accidentally killed by the gunner. The crime of murder is never pardoned in China. The Viceroy of the Province, fired with indignation at the supposed atrocity, demanded the perpetrator of the deed, or the person of him who ordered it. The event was stated in remonstrance to be purely accidental but the Viceroy, supposing it to have been done from a wicked disposition, still persisted in his 56 LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 57 demand, and to assure himself of that object, he seized one of the principal supercargoes. The other factories being alarmed, united themselves with the English as in a common cause, and seemed disposed to resist the intentions of the Viceroy who on his part arranged his troops on the banks of the river to force a compliance. It was at last deemed expe- dient on principles of policy, to give up the gunner with scarce a glimmering of hope that his life would be spared." Later on in a casual footnote he records that their worst fears had been realised, and the unfortunate gunner, given up, let us hope, not so much from motives of policy as to save the supercargo, had been done to death. That incident, to my mind, explains the Legation Quarter of Peking to-day. Of course the Legation, in its present form, dates only from the Boxer rising, but the germ of it was there when the merchants of the assembled nations felt themselves compelled to sacrifice the careless gunner "from motives of policy." One hundred and twenty years ago the Western nations were only a stage removed from the barbaric civilisation the Chinese had reached two or three thousand years before, but still they were moving onward, and they felt they must combine if they would trade with this rich land, and yet protect their subjects and their goods. And so they did combine, and there arose that curious state of affairs between the foreigners and the people of the land that has held for many years, that holds in no other land, and that has crystallised in the Legation Quarter of Peking. Suppose in London all the great nations of the 58 A WOMAN IN CHINA earth took a strip of the town, extending say from Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner, and from Park Lane to Bond Street, held it and fortified it heavily, barring out the inhabitants, not wholly, but by certain regulations that prevented them having the upper hand. The thing is unthinkable, yet that is exactly what has happened in Peking. Against the Tartar wall, from the Chien Men to the Ha Ta Men, the nations have taken a parallelogram of ground all but a mile square, they have heavily fortified it, on three sides they have cleared a broad glacis on which no houses may be built, and they have there a body of troops with which they could overawe if not hold all the town. No man knows exactly how many men the Japanese have, but supposing they are on a par with the other nations, there are at least two thousand five hundred men armed to the teeth and kept at the highest pitch of perfection in the Legation Quarter. Living there is like living in an armed camp. You cannot go in or out without passing forts or guns, in the streets you meet ammunition wagons, baggage wagons, Red Cross wagons, and at every turn are soldiers, soldiers of all the Euro- pean nations that have any standing at all, soldiers from America, soldiers from Japan; they are doing sentry-go at the various Legations, they are drilling, they are marching, they are shooting all day long. In one corner of the British Legation they keep un- touched a piece of the old shot- torn wall of 1900 and painted on it, in big black letters, is the legend, " Lest We Forget," a reminder always, if the nations needed a reminder, of the days of 1900, of the terrible days that may be repeated any time this ENTRANCE TO BRITISH LEGATION. ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS ON THE WALL. (Seepage 31) LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 59 peace-loving nation drifts into an anti-foreign out- break. I was going to write it is almost insulting, but it is insulting, and this armed Legation Quarter must be in truth cruelly galling to the better-class, educated Chinese. They must long to oust these arrogant men from the West and their neighbour from the East, who thus lord it over them in the very heart of their own city. Even the wall, the great Tartar wall built first by Kublai Khan, and finished by the Ming conquerors, comes under foreign domination from the Ha Ta Men to the Chien Men. The watch-tower over the Ha Ta Men is still in the hands of the Chinese, and like most things Chinese is all out of repair. The red lacquer is cracked, the gold is faded, the grass grows on the tiled roofs, in the winter dried-up and faded, in the summer lush and green, and for all the Chinese soldiers hold it, it is desolate and a thing of the past. But a hundred yards or so to the west, is the German post. Always are armed men there with the eagle on their helmets, always an armed sentry marches up and down, keeping watch and ward. No great need for them to hold the Ha Ta Men, their guns dominate it, and below in the town the French hold carefully the fortified eastern side of the Legation Quarter. The centre of that strip of wall, held by the Japanese, is marked by an iron fence called, I am told, a "traverse." There is a gate in it, and across the path to that gate, so that it may not be so easily got through, is built up a little wall of brick the height of a man. In the summertime the grass grows on it green and fresh, and all the iron bars of that fence and gate are wreathed in morning glory. The Japanese are not so much in evidence as the 60 A WOMAN IN CHINA efficient Germans or the smart Americans, but I am told they are more than keen, and would gladly and effectually hold the whole wall would the other nations allow them. At the Chien Men, the western end of the mile-long strip of wall are the Americans, tall, lean, smart, capable men in khaki, with slouch hats turned up at the sides, clean-shaven faces and the sound in their voices that makes of their English another tongue. In the troubles of 1912, when fires were breaking out all over the city, and every foreigner fled for safety to his Legation, Uncle Sam, guarding the western end of the wall overlooking those Legations, seized the beautiful new watch- tower on the Chien Men, his soldiers established themselves there, and they hold it still. It domin- ates their Legation they say with reason, for their own safety they must hold it, and the Chinese acquiesce, not because they like it, but because they must. Periodically representations come in, all is quiet now, the Americans may as well give up the main gate, or rather watch-tower, for they do not hold the main gate, only the tower that overlooks it. But the answer is always the same, it overlooks their Legation, they must hold it. They have a wireless telegraph post there and a block-house, and the regu- lations for the sentry, couched in cold, calm, official language, are an insult to the friendly nation that gives them hospitality, or would be so, if that nation had not shown itself incapable of controlling the passions of its own aroused people. The sentry clad in khaki in summer, in blue in winter, marching up and down by the watch-tower, magnificent in its gorgeous Eastern decorations of blue, and green, and red, and barbaric gold, must report at once anything LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 61 unusual taking place in the gate below, any large gathering of Chinese, any unusual commotion, but above all upon that wall, that wall that belongs to them and is the wall of their capital city, he must not allow, without a permit, any Chinese. The word- ing of the order runs, " No low-class Chinese," but the definition of low class is left to the discretion of the soldier, and he is not likely to risk a reproof from those in authority over him by being too lax. With my own eyes have I seen a Chinese, well-dressed in European clothes, turned back by the sentry from the ramp when he would have walked upon the wall. He looked surprised, he was with European friends, the order could not apply to him, but the sentry was firm. He had his orders, " No Chinese," and without a special permit he must see them carried out. It seemed cruel, and unnecessarily humiliating, but on the central ramp are still the places where the Americans, seeking some material for a barricade, fighting to save themselves from a ghastly death, tore out the bricks from the side of the great wall. Other nations beside Britain, write in their actions, if not on their walls : " Lest We Forget! " The lower-class Chinese probably do not mind the prohibition. It is considered bad manners for a Chinaman to walk upon the wall, because he thereby overlooks the private houses below, but in these Says of the New Republic possibly good manners are not so much considered as formerly, and since the Chinese have never been allowed upon the wall they probably do not realise that thirteen miles of it are free to them, if they care to go there. Some few I know do, because I have met there men gathering the dried vegetation for fuel, and I have 62 A WOMAN IN CHINA seen one or two beggars, long-haired, filthy men in the frowsiest of rags, but the first have probably got permission from the soldiers, and the latter, seeing foreigners there, have most likely been tempted by the hope of what to them is a lavish dole, and, finding no harm happen, have come again. I may be wrong, of course, but I hardly think death can have much terror for the Chinese beggar, life must hold so very little for him. Those who, having dared their own portion of the wall with impunity, find the foreign mile still a forbidden place to them, probably put it in the same category as the For- bidden City, and never realise that it is the outlander, the outer barbarian, and not their own Government that shuts them off. But the holding of that wall by an armed force, that dominates both the Chinese and the Tartar Cities, seems to me the very greatest thing in the way of insults. Some day when the Chinese are a united nation, powerful as they ought to be, they will awake to that insult, and the first thing they will do will be to clear their wall from foreign inter- ference. Meanwhile, as I sit in a courtyard of a temple of the Western Hills, drinking in the sparkling air of September, looking at the lovely blue sky peeping through the dark green branches of the temple pines, as I sit and write this book, I think gratefully of that loose-limbed, lissom, athletic, young American soldier who, with rifle across his shoulder, is doing sentry-go upon the wall. The German is there too, the stiff, well-drilled, military German, but my heart goes out to the man who is nearer akin, and whose speech is not unlike that of the people of my own land. It seems to me I am LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 63 safe here, alone among the Chinese, because of those soldiers. There are those who will say I am wrong, that the Chinese are always courteous, and that they like me because of the money I put into their pockets. And that is true enough too. I have found the very rickshaw coolie a finished, courteous gentleman in his manner towards me, and I have received many little acts of kindness which could but come from a kindly heart, with no thought of profit behind it; but still, deep down at the bottom of my heart, I know that the Chinese, more than any man on earth perhaps, respects power, and the Legation Quarter, and the holding of that wall, are an outward manifestation of power that reaches far and keeps me safe here in my mountain temple. The gods here by my side are dead, who fears or respects the gods, Spanish chestnuts are stored beside their altars, but the foreign soldiers on the wall are a fact there is no getting over. It impresses those in authority, and the fiat goes forth, permeating through all classes, " The foreigner is not to be touched under any circumstances what- ever." On this wall come the foreign community to exercise and promenade in the cool of the evening in summer, or to enjoy the sunshine at midday in winter, and here all the soldiers and sailors of the various nationalities foregather. There is no other place in all Peking where one can walk with com- fort, for the Chinese as a nation, have no idea of the joy of exercise. They have put it out of the power of their women to move save with difficulty, and that a man should take any pleasure in violent exercise seems to them absurd. To walk when he 64 A WOMAN IN CHINA can ride in a rickshaw, or mount a donkey, would argue something- wrong in his mental outlook, so it happens that, in all the great city, there are only the streets of the Legation Quarter and the wall where walking exercise can be indulged in. The streets of the Quarter are the streets of an uninteresting, commonplace town, but the wall overlooking the two cities is quite another matter. Here the part of the foreign community that does not ride takes its exercise, and foregathers with its kind. The foreign quarter is not always thinking of the dangers it is guarding against. That it thinks also a great deal of its amusement, goes without saying. I have observed that this is a special characteristic of the Briton abroad. At home the middle-class man — or woman — is chary of pleasure, taking it as if it were something he had hardly a right to ; but abroad he seizes eagerly the smallest opportunity for amusing himself, demanding amusement as something that hardly compensates him for his exile from his native land. So it has come that I, a looker-on, with less strong bonds than those from the Old Country binding me to my father's land, fancy that these exiles have in the end a far better time than the men of the same class who stay at home. I am apt to have no pity for them whatever. One thing is certain, people keep horses here in Peking who could not dream of such a luxury in England. True, they are only ponies fourteen hands high, but a great deal of fun can be got out of pony racing. And racing-stables are a feature of the Quarter. Not that they are in the Quarter. LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 65 On the plain, about five miles to the west of the city, lies the little race-course, and dotted about within easy distance of this excellent training-ground are the various training-stables for the ponies. The China pony comes from Mongolia, where close watch and ward is kept over him, and neither mares nor stallions are exported. "HI could only get hold of a mare," sighs the young racing man, but he sighs in vain. Mean- while he can indulge in the sport of kings cheaply. " I've joined another fellow in a racing-stable," said a man to me, soon after my arrival in Peking, and I looked upon him with something of the awe and respect one gives to great wealth. I had not thought he was so well off. He saw my mistake and laughed. "The preliminary expenses are only thirty pounds," he went on, " and I don't intend they shall be very heavy. We can have good sport at a moderate cost." Of course moderate cost is an elastic term, depending on the purse of the speaker, but in this case I think it meant that men of very ordinary means, poor exiles who would live in a six-roomed flat with a couple of maidservants in England, might have a good time without straining those means unduly. A race-meeting in Peking has peculiarities all its own. Of course it is only the men from the West who would think of a race-meeting. The Chinese, except at the theatre, do not amuse themselves in crowds. The Spring Meeting took place early in May, and the description of it should come a little later in my book, but it seems to fall naturally into £ 66 A WOMAN IN CHINA the story of the doings of the Legation Quarter. Arrangements were made with the French railway running to Hankow to stop close to the course, and put the race-going crowd down there. There was no other means of getting there, except by riding ; for driving in a country where every inch of ground, save a narrow and rough track, is given over to the needs of agriculture, is out of the question. That spring race-meeting the day was ideal. There was the blue sky overhead, the brilliant sunshine, a gentle breeze to temper it, the young kaoliang was springing, lush and green, in the fields, and the ash-trees that shelter the race-course were one delicate tender green. A delicious day. Could the heart of man desire more? Apparently the foreign residents of Peking did not desire more, for they turned out, men, women, and children. And then I saw what a handful of people are these foreigners who live in the capital of China and endeavour to direct her destinies, for save and except the missionary element, most of the other foreigners were there, from his Britannic Majesty's representative to the last little boy who had joined a hong as junior clerk at a hundred dollars a month, and felt that the cares of Empire were on his shoulders. They were mostly British, of course, the foreign trade of China — long may it be so — is mostly in British hands ; and there were representa- tives of every other great nation, the Ministers of France, Germany, Russia, of Italy, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Holland, and Japan, everyone but America, for America was busy recognising the Chinese Republic, and the other nations were smiling, and wondering why the nation that prides LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 67 itself on being the champion of freedom for the people, was being the first to recognise what is, virtually, a despotic rule. The little course, a mile round, is marked out with leafy ash-trees, the grand-stand was charming with lilac bloom purple and white, and banksia roses, fragrant as tender memories. It was shaded by p'engs — mats — raised high on scaffolding, so that pleasant shade might not interfere with the cool breeze, and here were the women of the community, the women of well-to-do people, gay in dainty toilets from London and Paris ; the men were in light summer suits, helmets and straw hats, for summer was almost upon us. Tiffin, the luncheon of the East, was set in the rooms behind, decorated with miniature flags of all nations, made in Japan, and wreathed with artificial flowers, though there was a wealth of natural blossom around the stand out- side. There is a steward's room and the weighing- room in one tiny building with a curved roof of artistic Chinese design, and all the ponies are walked about and saddled and mounted where every interested spectator can see them. And every spec- tator on that sunny May day was interested, for the horses, the sturdy Chinese ponies, were, and always are, owned and ridden by the men of the company, men whom everybody knows intimately. For these Peking race-meetings are only amateur, and though, occasionally, a special pony may change hands at two thousand dollars — two hundred pounds — the majority are bought and sold under two hundred dollars — twenty pounds — and yet their owners have much joy and pride in them. Surely it is unique, a race-meeting where all the 68 A WOMAN IN CHINA civilised nations of the earth meet and fraternise in simple, friendly fashion, taking a common pleasure in small things. "They're off!" Mostly the exclamation was in English, but a Russian-owned horse, ridden by a Cossack rider, won one race, and was led proudly up to the weighing-room by a fair lady of his own people, and was cordially applauded, for the winner was always applauded, no matter what his nationality. The horses, coming out to parade, were each led by their own mafoo, who managed to look horsey in spite of a shaven head, long queue, and pro- nounced Chinese features. Up and down they led the ponies, up and down, and when at last the precious charges must be resigned, a score of them squatted down just where they could get the best view of the race, and doubtless each man put up a little prayer to the god he most affected, that the pony that carried his money might come in first. When we were not watching the saddling, or the parade, or the race, or the weighing-in, we were listening to a Chinese band, Sir Robert Bredon's band, with a Chinese conductor, playing selections from all the modern Western music. It might have been — where in the world might it not have been? Nowhere but in Peking in the heart of China surely, for there, just beyond the limit of the course, were long strings of camels bound for coal to the Western Hills, marching steadily, solemnly, tirelessly, as they marched in the days of Marco Polo, and a thousand years before the days of Marco Polo, and all round the course, crowding every point of vantage were a large concourse of Chinese, people LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 69 of the working and middle classes, clad mostly in blue, the women with bound feet from the farms near by, the men and the children very likely from further afield, but all unchanging as the camels themselves, eagerly watching the foreigners' sports. They are not allowed to come into the enclosure, every mafoo and attendant wears a special badge, and even Chinese of the better class may come only by special invitation of some member. These interested folk, who have no friends among the foreigners may not even go into the enclosure, where the " Tommies " and bluejackets, men from England and America, France, Japan, and all the countries of the earth crowded in the gay sunshine making high holiday. Nevertheless the Orientals surrounded the course. They got upon the mounds of earth that are at the back and looked from that vantage-point not only at the races but at the foreign devils at their tiffin and afternoon tea. Their own refreshment was provided by hawkers selling cakes and sweetmeats, just outside the forbidden ground, and Peking carts and donkeys waited round to take them back to their homes. There were even beggars there, beggars with long, unkempt hair, wrapped in a single garment of sackcloth, ragged, unwashed, unkempt, the typical beggars of China, for no one knows better than they when money is being lightly handled, and as the bright sunny day, the gorgeous spring day of Northern China drew slowly to a close doubtless even they, whom every man's hand was against, gathered in a few stray cash. I hope they did. Such a very little makes so much difference in China. The sun sank slowly to the west in the translucent 70 A WOMAN IN CHINA sky, the ponies in the saddling paddock were walked slowly up and down in the long shadows of the ash- trees, and the country was beautiful with the soft regret of the dying day as we walked back through the fields of kaoliang to the railway station, we, the handful of people who represented the power and majesty of the Western world. The mighty walls of an older civilisation frowned down upon the train — this thing of yesterday — the last rays of the setting sun lighted up all the glory of the red and gold of the Chien Men watch-tower and we were in the Legation Quarter once more, with armed sentries at the gates, and the American soldier upon the wall sounding the bugle call for the changing guard. I come from a country where every little township considers a race-course as necessary as a cemetery. I have been to many many race-meetings, but this one in Peking, where the men of the land are so barred out that no one of Chinese descent may belong to the Club or even ride a race, stands out as unique. It has a place in my mind by itself. It was so expressive of the attitude of the Powers who watch over China. Peking, the Peking of the Legations had been amusing herself. The National Assembly was in an uproar, the Premier was openly accused of murder, the Loan was in anything but a satisfactory state, everyone feared that the North and the South would be at each other's throats before the month was out, the air was full of rumours of wars, but the English-speaking community love racing, the other nations, from their Ministers downwards, had fallen into line, and Peking, foreign Peking, did itself well. And I wondered, I wondered much what the SOUTH-EASTERN WATCH-TOWER, PEKING, i. sTL A FORT OF THE BRITISH LEGATION. LEGATION QUARTER OP PEKING 71 Chinese thought of it all. It is very, very difficult, so men tell me who have lived in China long, and speak the language well, to get at the bottom of the Chinese mind, to know what they really do think of us. The Chinese gentleman is so courteous that as far as possible he always expresses the opinion he thinks you would like to hear, and the Chinese woman, even if she be of the better classes, with very few exceptions is unlearned and ignorant as a child, indeed she is worse than a child of the Western nations, for the child is at least allowed to ask questions and learn, while all her charm is supposed to depend upon her subservience and her ignorance. As I stood on the race-course that day, and many a time as I sat in the lounge of the Wagons Lits Hotel — the European hotel of the Legation Quarter — where all tourists visiting Peking come, where the nations of the world foregather, and East meets West as never before perhaps in the world's history have they met, I have wondered very much indeed what the East, the portly middle-aged China- man with flowing silken robes and long queue thinks of us and our manners and customs. He was accompanied perhaps by a friend, or perhaps by a lady in high collar and trousers with a little son, the crown of the child's head shaven, and the remaining hair done in a halo of little plaits tied up with string, yellow, red, or blue, and he watched gravely either the dancing, or the conversation, or the conjurer, or whatever other amusement the "Wagons Lits" had for the time being set up. Again and again have I watched him, but I could never even make a guess at what he thought. Probably it was anything but complimentary. 72 A WOMAN IN CHINA " The men dressed for dinner," said a Chinese once, describing an evening he had spent among foreigners; "then the order was given and the women stripped," that is took off their wraps when the music began, only everything is "ordered" in China, " and each man seized a woman in his arms. He pushed her forward, he pulled her back," graphic illustrations were given, "he whirled round and round and she had no will of her own. And it was all done to horrible music." Everything is in the point of view, and that is how, at least one Chinese gentleman saw a waltz. I used to wonder what he said of the musical comedy that from time to time is presented by a wandering company in the dining-room of the Wagons Lits Hotel. They displayed upon a tiny crowded stage, for the edification of Chinese and foreigners alike, for the room was crowded with Chinese both of the old and of the new order, such a picture of morals as Europeans take as a matter of course. We know well enough that such scenes as are depicted in " The Girl in the Taxi " are merely the figments of an exuberant imagination, and are not the daily habits of any class either in London or Paris. But what do the Chinese think? All things are neces- sary and good, I suppose, but some are difficult to explain. Thirteen years ago the Boxer tragedy, now the musical comedy full of indecencies scarcely veiled. Truth to tell, it was a very interesting thing for a new-comer like me to sit in that hotel watching the people, and listening to the various opinions so freely given by all and sundry. From all parts of the world people come there, tourists, soldiers, LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 78 sailors, business men, philanthropists — men who were working for the good of China, and men who were ready to exploit her. And then the opinions as to the safety of the Europeans in China that were expressed! Here, in the security of the Legation Quarter, I collected those opinions as I wanted to go into the interior, and I was by no means anxious to risk my life. To arrive at any decision was very difficult. In the Treaty Ports there may be some unanimity, but once outside it seemed that every man had his own particular opinion of China and the Chinese, and all these opinions differed widely. " Safe," said a man who had fought through the Boxer trouble ; " safer far than London. They had to pay then, and they won't forget, you can take your oath of that." " Like living on a volcano," said another. " No, I shall never forget the Boxer trouble. That's the kind of thing that is graved on your mind with hot irons. Do it again? Of course they'll do it again. A docile people, I grant you, but they're very fiends when they're aroused. They're emotional, you know, the French of the Far East, and when they let themselves go " He paused, and I realised that he had seen them let themselves go, and no words could describe the horror of it. "Would I let my wife and children live in one of the hu t'ungs of Peking? Would I? How would they get away when the trouble commenced ? " The chances are they couldn't get away. The hu t'ungs of Peking are narrow alley-ways running out from the main thoroughfares, and the houses there are built, Chinese fashion, round courtyards 74 A WOMAN IN CHINA and behind blank walls, hidden away in a nest of other buildings, and the difficulty of getting out and back to the armed Legation Quarter, when a mob were out bent on killing, would be enormous. "A Debt Commission spells another anti-foreign outbreak, and we're within an ace of a Debt Com- mission," said another man thoughtfully; "and if there is a row and things look like going against us, I keep one cartridge in my revolver for myself." It does not seem much when I write it down, such things have I heard carelessly said many a time before, but when I, a foreigner and a solitary woman, was contemplating a trip up-country, they had a somewhat sinister sound. On the other hand again and again have I heard men scout all idea of danger, men who have been up and down the country for years. And yet but yesterday, the day before I write these words, a man looked at his pretty young wife, she was sweetly pretty, and vowed vehemently, " I would not leave my wife and child alone for a night in our house just outside the Quarter for anything on earth. If anything did happen — and it might " and he dropped his voice. There are some things that will not bear thinking about, and he had seen the looting of Nanking and the unfortunates who had died when they took the Woosung Forts. " We went to look after the wounded," said he, " and there weren't any wounded. The savage Northern soldiery had seen to that." And those whom they mutilated were their own people! What would they do to a foreigner in the event of an anti-foreign outbreak ? " Are you afraid ? " I asked a man who certainly lived far enough away in the city. LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 75 He looked at me curiously, as if he were going to say there was nothing to be afraid of, and then he changed his mind. " Perhaps I am when I think of it," said he ; " but then you see, I don't think of it." And that is the average attitude, the necessary attitude, because no man can perpetually brood over the dangers that might assail him. Certain pre- cautions he takes to safeguard himself, here are the nations armed to the teeth in the heart of a friendly country, and for the rest Quien sabe? And I talked with all men, and while I was making preparations to go into the interior, had the good-fortune to see a quaint and curious pageant that took me back to Biblical days and made me remember how Vashti the Queen was cast down, and the beautiful Esther found favour in the sight of her lord, and how another tragic Hebrew Queen, going down to posterity with a name unjustly smirched and soiled, had once painted her face and tired her head, and looking out of the window had defied to the death her unfaithful servant. " Had Zimri peace who slew his master ? " CHAPTER V THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS A good republican — The restricted Empire of the Manchus — Condign punishment — Babylon — An Adventurous Chinaman — The entrance to the Forbidden City — The courtyards of Baby- lon— A discordant and jarring note — Choirs of priests — A living Buddha — " The Swanee River " — The last note in bathos — Palace eunuchs — Out of hand — Afternoon tea — The funeral procession — The imperial bier — Quaint and strange and Eastern. THE Dowager- Empress of China, the unloved wife and widow of the late Emperor, died, so they gave out to the world, on the 22nd February, 1913, the day I arrived in China. As Empress, just one of the women of the Court chosen to please the ruler and to bear him children, his consort in China never seems to have had any particular standing. This Empress was overshadowed by her aunt, the great Dowager-Empress whom all the world knew, but once the Emperor was dead, as one of the guardians of the baby Emperor she came into a certain amount of power, for the position of Dowager- Empress seems to be an official one as, since her death, another woman who has never been wife to an Emperor has been appointed to the post. The power has gone from the Manchus, but China is wedded to her past, nothing passes, so even the Chinese Republic, the men who barely a year before THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 77 had ousted the Empress from her high estate, united in doing her honour at her obsequies. " She was the best republican of us all," said a Chinese gentleman, learned in the lore and civilisa- tion of the West, " for she freely gave up her position that China might be free." It was a pretty way of putting it, but to me it seems doubtful whether anyone in over-civilised China trammelled with many conventions, is free, and it is hardly likely that a woman bred to think she had attained the most important position in the world that can fall to a woman's lot, would give it up freely for the good of a people she knew absolutely nothing about. All the Manchus rule over now are the courtyards and palaces of the Forbidden City, and there they are supreme. It is whispered that only a week before the day of which I write, a man was there beaten to death for having stolen something belonging to the dead Empress. So much for the love of the Manchus for freedom and enlightenment. It carries one back to the Middle Ages — further, to Babylon. They slew there mercilessly, and they also feasted — so did the representatives of the dead Empress hold high festival in her honour. " The King made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and small, seven days, in the Court in the garden of the King's palace. "Where were white, green, and blue hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble, the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble. 78 A WOMAN IN CHINA "And they gave them drink in vessels of gold . . . and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the King." So Ahasuerus the King entertained his people of Babylon, when Vashti the Queen fell, and of Baby- lon only could I think when, first I entered the Forbidden City. Standing on the walls of Peking, a city of the plain, you look down upon twelve square miles of grey-tiled roofs, the roofs of one-storied houses hidden in the summertime by a forest of trees, but in the heart of the city are high buildings that stand out not only by reason of their height but because the roofs of golden-brown tiles, imperial yellow, gleam and glow in the sunlight. This is the For- bidden City where has dwelt for hundreds of years the Emperor of China, often he must have been the only man in it, and always it was closed to all save the immediate following of the Son of Heaven. I never realised till I came to Peking that this forbidden ground was just as much an object of curiosity to the Chinese as it would have been to any European nation. " I went in once," said a Chinese gentleman to me, "when I was a young man." He was only forty then. " Were you invited ? " " No, no. I went secretly. I wanted to see what it was like." "But how?" " I got the dress of a eunuch and I slipped in early one morning, and then, when I got in, I hardly dared move or breathe for fear someone should find me out. Then when no one took any notice of me I PEKING FROM THE WALL IN WINTER. ENTRANCE TO THE FORBIDDEN CITY. THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 79 walked about and saw everything I could, but the last hour was the worst, I was terrified at the thought that I might not be able to get out." " And if you had been caught ? " He looked grave even then at the remembrance of that bygone desperate adventure. " Oh death, certainly." "Death?" " Yes, a long and lingering death," and the thought of what he had escaped twenty years ago, was on his face. I looked at him with interest, a tall stout China- man with his hair cut short in the modern fashion, a long grey robe of silk reaching to his feet, and a little short black sleeveless jacket over it. He did not look, pleasant as he was, as if he would ever have dared anything, but then I have never thought of any Chinaman as likely to risk his life without hope of gain, and to risk it for mere curiosity as a man of my own people might have done! It was throwing a new light on the Chinese. I rather admired him and then I found he was Eastern after all. We talked of Yuan Shih K'ai, and he, being of the opposition party, expressed his opinion freely, and, considering all things, very boldly about him. " He has eighteen wives," said he shaking his head as if this was the unpardonable sin in a man who desired to imitate the manners and customs of the West. I repeated this to a friend, and he burst out laugh- ing. " Why the old sinner," said he, " what's he throwing stones for? He's got seventeen and a half himself!" 80 A WOMAN IN CHINA So it seems it will be some time before forbidden cities on a small scale will be out of fashion in China. And still, in these days of the Republic, the For- bidden City of the Manchus dominates Peking. It was thrown open for three days to all who could produce a black paper chrysanthemum with five leaves, red, yellow, blue, black, and white, fastened to a tab of white paper with a mourning edge and an inscription in Chinese characters. The foreigners had theirs from their Legations, and the Chinese from their guilds. And those Chinese — there are many of them — who are so unlucky as to belong to no guild, Chinese of the humbler sort, were shut out, and for them there was erected on the great marble bridge in front of the southern entrance, a pavilion of gorgeous orange silk enclosing an altar with offer- ings that stood before a picture of the dead Empress, so that all might pay their respects. I pinned my badge to the front of my fur coat, for it was keen and cold in spite of the brilliant sun- shine, and went off to the wrong entrance, the eastern gate, where only princes and notables were admitted. I thought it strange there should be no sign of a foreigner, but foreigners in Peking can be but as one in a hundred or less, so undismayed, I walked straight up to the gate, and immediately a row of palace servants clad in their white robes of mourning, clustered before the sacred place. They talked and explained vehemently, and with perfect courtesy, but they were very agitated, and though I could not understand one word they said, one thing was certain, admitted I could not be there. So I turned to the southern gate and there it seemed all Peking was streaming. THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 81 It was like China that we might not go in the direct way. There is a great paved way through the Imperial City alongside a canal that runs between marble- lined banks, but on the principal bridge that crosses it was erected the orange silk pavilion for the poorer classes, and we, the wearers of the black chrysan- themum, hundreds and thousands and ten thousands of us, had to turn off to the right and go along by the tall, pinkish red walls till we came to the great arch- ways in the walls, five great archways filled in with doors studded with great brazen knobs. Usually they were fast shut, but they were open to-day, guarded by soldiers in full-marching order, soldiers of the New Republic in modern khaki looking out of the picture, and there streamed into the tunnel- like entrance as curious a crowd as ever I set eyes upon. All must walk, old and young, great and lowly, representatives of the mighty nations of the world and tottering Chinese ladies swaying like "lilies in the wind" upon their maimed feet, only one man, a Mongol Prince, an Incarnation of a Buddha, a living Buddha, was borne in in a sedan chair. But every other mortal had to walk. The tunnels must always be gloomy, and, even on that cold day, they struck chill after the brilliant sunlight, and they are long, for the walls, just here, are about ninety feet through, so might the entrances have been in the palace of Ahasuerus the King. The courtyard we first entered had a causeway running right across it of great hewn stones, hewn and laid by slave labour, when all men bowed before the Son of Heaven, hundreds of years ago. They are worn in many places now, worn by the passing of many F 82 A WOMAN IN CHINA feet, and still more worn are the grey Chinese bricks that pave the courtyard on either side. It is a great courtyard of splendid proportions. In front of us frowned more high walls of pinkish red, topped by the buildings that can be seen all over Peking, temples or halls of audience with golden-brown tiled roofs that gleamed in the sunlight, and on either side were low buildings with fronts of lattice-work rather fallen into disrepair. They might have been used as guard-houses or, more probably, were the quarters of the six thousand or so of eunuchs that the dignity of the ruler required to attend upon him. There were a few treesA leafless then in March, but there was nothing to spoil the dignity and repose of every line. A great mind surely conceived this entrance, and great must have been the minds that kept it so severely simple. If it be the heart of a nation then do I understand. The people who streamed along the causeway, who roamed over the worn brick pavement, had, as a rule, delicate, finely formed hands though they were but humble craftsmen. If the hands of the poorest be so fine, is it any wonder that the picked men of such a people, their very heart, conceived such a mighty pile? There were more, longer and gloomier tunnels, admitting to a still greater courtyard, a courtyard that must be at least a quarter of a mile across, with the same cause- way of worn stones that cry out the tale of the suffer- ings of the forgotten slaves, who hewed them and dragged them into place, the same grey pavement of bricks, the same tall smooth red walls, crowned over the gateway with temples, rising one story after another till the tiled roof cuts the sky. And through a third set of tunnels we came into a third courtyard, THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 83 the courtyard where the obsequies were being held. The third courtyard was spacious as Trafalgar Square, and round three sides was a wide raised platform of stone reached by broad and easy ramps, and all across it ran a canal held in by marble banks, crossed by graceful bridges, and every one of the uprights, made of white marble, was crowned by a figure that I took for the representation of a flame ; but those, who know, tell me it is meant to represent a cloud, and is part of the dragon symbolism. When marble is the medium by which so light a thing as a cloud is represented it must be very finely done indeed, when one outside the national thought, such as I, sees in that representation a flame. Two colossal bronze monsters with grinning countenances and curly manes, conventional lions, mounted on dragon-carved pedestals, stand before the entrance to the fourth temple or hall of audience, and here was what the crowd had come to see, the light- hearted, cheerful, merry crowd, that were making high holiday, here was the altar to the dead. Overhead were the tiled roofs, and of all the colours of the rainbow surely none could have been chosen better than the golden brown of those tiles to harmonise with the clear blue of the glorious sky above it, no line to cut it could have been so appro- priate as the gentle sweep of the curve of a Chinese roof. There was a little grass growing on the roofs, sere and withered, but a faint breeze just stirred its tops, and it toned with the prevailing golden brown in one glorious beauty. Where else in the world could one get such an effect? Only in Australia have I seen such a sky, and there it was never wedded to such a glow of colour as that it looks down 84 A WOMAN IN CHINA upon in Peking. The men who built this palace in a bygone age, built broadly, truly, for all time. And then, it was surely as if some envious spirit had entered in and marred all this loveliness — no, that would be impossible, but struck a discordant and jarring note that should perhaps emphasise in our minds the beauty that is eternal — for all the front of that temple, which as far as I could see was pinkish red, with under the eaves that beautiful dark blue, light blue, and green, that the Chinese know so well how to mingle, was covered with the most garish, commonplace decorations, made for the most part of paper, red, violent Reckitt's blue, yellow, and white. From every point of vantage ran strings of flags, cheap common little flags of all nations, bits of string were tied to |the marble clouds, and they fluttered from them, and the great wonderful bronze lions contrived to look coy in frills that would not have disgraced a Yorkshire ham. The altar on the northern platform was hidden behind a trellis-work of gaily coloured paper, and there were offerings upon it of fruit and cakes in great profusion, all set out before a portrait of the late Empress. On either side were two choirs of priests, Buddhists and Taoists in gorgeous robes of red and orange. What faith the dead Empress held I do not know, but the average Chinese, while he is the prince of material- ists, believing nothing he cannot see and explain, has also a keen eye to the main chance, and on his death-bed is apt to summon priests of all faiths so as to let no chance of a comfortable future slip ; but possibly it was more from motives of policy than from any idea of aiding the dead woman that these representatives of the two great faiths of China were A PATH IN THE GROUNDS OF THE WINTER PALACE. A SECLUDED CORNER OF THE WINTER PALACE. THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 85 summoned. On the right^ behind a trellis-work of bright paper, one choir sat in a circle, beat gongs, struck their bells and intoned; and on the left, behind a like trellis-work, the other choir knelt before low desks and also solemnly intoned. Their Mon- golian faces were very impassive, they looked neither to the right nor the left, but kept time to the cease- less beat of their leader's stick upon a globe of wood split across the middle like a gaping mouth emblem- atical of a fish and called mu yii — or wooden fish. What were they repeating? Prayers for the dead? Eulogies on her who had passed? Or comfort for the living? Not one of these things. Probably they were intoning Scriptures in Tibetan, an un- known tongue to them very likely, but come down to them through the ages and sanctified by thousands of ceaseless repetitions. And the people came, passed up the steps, bowed by the direction of the usher — in European clothes — three times to the dead Empress's portrait, and the altar, were thanked by General Chang, the Military Commandant, and passed on by the brightly clad intoning priests down into the crowd in the great courtyard again. It was weird to find myself taking part in such a ceremony. Stranger still to watch the people who went up and down those steps. In all the world surely never was such an extraordinary funeral gathering. I am very sure that never shall I attend such another. There was such a mingling of the ancient and the blatantly modern. To the sound of weird, archaic, Eastern music the living Buddha, clad all in yellow, in his yellow sedan chair, borne by four bearers in dark blue with Tartar caps on their heads, made his reverence, and was followed 86 A WOMAN IN CHINA by a band of Chinese children from some American mission school, who, with misguided zeal sang fer- vently at the top of their shrill childish voices " Down by the Swanee River " and " Auld Lang Syne," and then soldiers in modern uniform of khaki or bright blue were followed by police officers in black and gold. The wrong note was struck by the " Swanee River," the high officials dwelt upon it, for the Chinese does not look to advantage in these garbs, he looks what he is^ makeshift, a bad imita- tion, and the jarring was only relieved when the Manchu princes came in white mourning sheepskins and black Tartar caps. They may be dissolute and decadent, have all the vices that new China accuses them of, but at least they looked polished and dignified gentlemen, at their ease and in their place. It does not matter, possibly. The President once said that to petition for a monarchy was an act of fanaticism worthy of being punished by imprison- ment, and so the old order must in a measure pass ; even in China, the unchanging, there must come, it is a law of nature, some little change, and when I looked at the bows and arrows of the Manchu guard leaning against the wall I realised that it would be impossible to keep things as they were, however picturesque. Still khaki uniforms, if utilitarian, are ugly, and American folk-songs, under such condi- tions, struck the last note in bathos, or pathos. It depends on the point of view. On the white paper tabs, attached to our black chrysanthemums, was written something about the New Republic, but it might have been the spirit of the Empress at home, so cheerful and bent on enjoyment was the crowd which thronged the THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 87 courtyard. The bands played, sometimes Eastern music, strange and haunting, sometimes airs from the European operas, there were various tents erected with seats and tables, and refreshments were served, oranges, and ginger, and tea, and cakes of all kinds, both in the tents and at little altar-like stands dotted about the courtyard even at the very foot of the pedestals of the great conventional lions. And the people walked round looking at everything, peeping through every crevice in the hopes of seeing some part of the palace that was not open to them, chatting, laughing, greeting each other as they would have done at a garden-party in Europe. There were all sorts of people, dressed in all sorts of fashions. New China looked at best common- place and ordinary in European clothes ; old China was dignified in a queue, silken jacket and brocaded petticoat, generally of a lighter colour; Manchu ladies wore high head-dresses and brilliant silken coats, blue or pink, lavender or grey, and Chinese ladies tottered along on tiny, bound feet that reminded me of the hoofs of a deer, and the most fashionable, unmarried girls wore short coats with high collars covering their chins, and tight-fitting trousers, often of gaily coloured silk, while the older women added skirts, and the poorer classes just wore a long coat of cotton, generally blue, with trousers tightly girt in at the ankles, and their maimed feet in tiny little embroidered shoes. European dress the Chinese woman very seldom affects yet, and their jet black hair, plastered together with some sort of substance that makes it smooth and shiny, is never covered, but flowers and jewelled pins are stuck in it. Occasionally — I 88 A WOMAN IN CHINA did on this day — you will see a woman with a black embroidered band round the front of her head, but this, I think, denotes that she is of the Roman Catholic faith, for the Roman Catholics have been in China far longer than any other Christian sect, and they invented this head-dress for the Chinese woman who for ages has been accustomed to wear none, because of the Pauline injunction, that it was a shame for a woman to appear in a church with her head uncovered. Old China did not approve of a woman going about much at all, and here at this funeral I heard many old China hands remarking how strange it was to see so many women mingling with the throng. It marked the change ; but such a very short time back, such a thing would have been impossible. There were numbers of palace eunuchs too — keepers of the women who, apparently, may now show their faces to all men, and they were clad all in the mourning white, with here and there one, for some reason or other I cannot fathom, in black. The demand for eunuchs was great when the Emperor dwelt, the one man, in the Forbidden City surrounded by his women, and they say that very often the number employed rose to ten thousand. Constantly, as some in the ranks grew old, fell sick, or died, they had to be replaced, and, so conserva- tive is China, the recruits were generally drawn from certain villages whose business it was to supply the palace eunuchs. Often, of course, the operation was performed in their infancy, but often, very often, a man was allowed to grow up, marry, and have children, before he was made ready for the palace. " Impossible," I said, " he would not consent THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 89 then. Never." And my informant laughed piti- fully. " Ah," said she, " you don't know the struggle in China. Anything for a livelihood." Some of the eunuchs wanted their photographs taken, and I was willing enough if they would only give me room. I wanted one in white, but they desired one in black, either because he was the most important or the least important, I know not which, and they sat him on a stone that had been a seat perhaps when Kublai Khan built the palace ; and the keeper of the women, the representative of the old cruel past, that pressed men and women alike into the service of the great, looked in my camera sheepish as a schoolboy kissed in public by his maiden aunt. There were coolies, too, in the ordinary blue cotton busy about the work that the entertaining of such a multitude necessarily entails, and everyone looked cheerful and happy, as, after all, why should they not, for death is the common lot, and must come to all of us, and they had seen and heard of the dead Empress about as much as the dweller in Chicago had. They were merely taking what she, or her representatives, gave with frank goodwill, and enjoying themselves accordingly. Against the walls they kept putting up long scrolls covered with Chinese characters, sentences in praise of the virtues of the Empress, and sent, as we would send funeral wreaths, to honour the dead, and presently a wind arose and tore at them and they fluttered out from the walls like long streamers, and as the wind grew wilder, some were torn down altogether. But that was on the afternoon of the second day, when worse things happened. 90 A WOMAN IN CHINA I went down to the Forbidden City after tiffin, and behold, outside the great gates, looking up longingly and murmuring a little, was a great crowd that grew momentarily greater. The doors, studded with brazen nails, were fast closed, and little parties of soldiers with their knapsacks upon their backs were evidently telling the crowd to keep back, and very probably, since it was China, the reason why they should keep back. The reason was, of course, lost upon me, I only knew that, before I realised what was happening, I was in the centre of a crushing crowd that was gradually growing more unmanageable. A Chinese crowd is wonderfully good-natured, far better-tempered than a European crowd of a like size would be, but when a crowd grows great, it is hardly responsible for its actions. Besides, a Chinese crowd has certain little unpleasant habits. The men picked up the little children, for the tiniest tots came to this great festival, and held them on their shoulders, but they coughed, and hawked, and spit, and wiped their noses in the primitive way Adam probably did before he thought of using a fig-leaf as a pocket handkerchief, and at last I felt that the only thing to be done was to edge my way to the fringe of the press, because, even if the doors were opened, it would have seemed like taking my life in my hands to go into one of those tunnels with their uneven pavements in such a crush. Once down it would be hopeless to think of getting up again. After a time, however, they did open the doors, and the people surged in. When all was clear I followed, and once inside heard how the people in the great courtyard, in spite of police and soldiers, CAMELS IN MORRISON STREET. MAKING CAKES, STREET IN PEKING. THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 91 had swarmed up and threatened by their rush, the good-natured, purposeless rush of a crowd, to carry away offerings, altar, choirs and decorations, and, very naturally, those in authority had closed the doors against all new-comers until the people had been got well in hand again. It had taken some time. Before the altar was a regular scrimmage, and after the crowd had passed it left behind it, shoes, and caps, and portions of its clothing which were thrown back into the courtyard to be gathered up by those who could recognise their own property. By the time I arrived things were settling down. We had to wait in the second courtyard, and the women, Chinese ladies with their little aching feet, and Manchus in their high head-dresses sat them- selves down on the edge of the causeway, because standing on pavement is wearisome, and there waited patiently till the doors were opened, and inside everything was soon going again as gaily as at an ordinary garden-party in Somerset. " Do you like Chinese tea ? " asked a Chinese lady of me in slow and stilted English. I said I did. "Come," said she, taking my hand in her cold little one, and hand in hand we walked, or rather I walked and she tottered, across to one of the great pavilions that had been erected, and there she sat me down and a cup of the excellent tea was brought me, and every one of the Chinese ladies present, out of the kindly hospitality of her heart towards the lonely foreigner, gave me, with her own fair and shapely little hands, a cake from the dish that was set before us by a white-clad servant. Frankly, I wished they wouldn't be so hospitable. I wanted to say I was quite capable of choosing my own cake, 92 A WOMAN IN CHINA and that I had a rooted objection to other people pawing the food I intended to eat, but it seemed it might be rude, and I did not wish to nip kindly feelings in the bud. And then, as the evening shadows drew long, I went back to my hotel, sorry to leave the Forbidden City, glad to have had this one little glimpse of the strange and wonderful that is bound to pass away. The Empress died in February, in March they held this, can we call it lying-in-state, but it was not till the 3rd of April that her funeral cortege moved from the Forbidden City, and the streets of Peking were thronged with those who came to pay her respect. Did they mourn? Well, I don't know. Hardly, I think, was it mourning in the technical sense. The man in the street in England is far enough away from the king on the throne, but in China it seems as if he might inhabit a different sphere. The sky was a cloudless blue, and the bright golden sunshine poured down hot as a July day in England, or a March day in Australia, there was not a wisp of cloud in the sky ; in all the five weeks that I had been in China there had never been the faintest indication that such a thing was ever expected, ever known, but at first the brilliancy had been cold, now it was warm, the winter was past, and from the great Tartar wall, looking over the Tartar City — the city that the Mings conquered and the Manchus made their own — the forest of trees that hid the furthest houses was all tinged with the faintest, daintiest green; and soon to the glory of blue and gold, the blue of the sky and the gold of the sunshine, would be added the vivid green that THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 93 tells of the new-born life. And one woman who had held high place here, one sad woman, who had missed most that was good in fife, if rumours be true, was to be carried to her long home that day. The funeral procession started from the Eastern Gate of the Forbidden City, came slowly down the broad street known now as Morrison Street, turned into the way that passes the Legations and runs along by the glacis whereon the conquering Western nations have declared that, for their safety, no Chinese shall build a house, the Europeans call it the Viale d'ltalia, because it passes by the Italian Legation, and the Chinese by the more eupho- nious name of Chang an Cheeh — the street of Eternal Repose — a curious Commentary on the fighting that went on there in 1900, into the Chien Men Street, that is the street of the main gate through which it must go to the railway station. It seemed to me strange this ruler of an ancient people, buried with weird and barbaric rites, was to be taken to her last resting-place by the modern railway, that only a very few years ago her people, at the height of their anti-foreign feeling, had wished to oust from the country — root and branch. But since the funeral procession was going to the railway station it must pass through the Chien Men, and the curtain wall that ran round the great gate offered an excellent point of vantage from which I, with the rest of the European population, might see all there was to be seen. And for this great occasion, the gate in the south of the curtain wall, the gate that is always shut because only the highest in the land may pass through, was open, 94 A WOMAN IN CHINA for the highest in the land, the last of the Manchu rulers, was dead. I looked down into the walled-in space between the four gateway arches, as into an arena, and the whole pageant passed below me. First of all marching with deliberate slowness, that contrives to be dignified if they are only carrying coals, came about twenty camels draped in imperial yellow with tails of sable, also an imperial badge hanging from their necks. The Manchus were a hunting people, and though they have been dwellers in towns for the last two hundred and fifty years the fact was not forgotten now that their last ruler had died. She was going on a journey, a long, long journey; she might want to rest by the way, therefore her camels bore tent-poles and tents of the imperial colour. They held their heads high and went noiselessly along, pad, pad, pad, as their like have gone to and fro from Peking for thousands of years. Mongol, or Manchu, or son of Han, it is all the same to the camel. He ministers to man's needs because he must, but he himself is unchanging as the ages, fixed in his way as the sky above, whether he bears grain from the north, or coal from the Western Hills, or tents and drapery for an imperial funeral. Then there were about fifty white ponies, without saddle or trapping of any kind, each led by a mafoo clad in blue like an ordinary coolie. The Peking carts that followed with wheels and tilts of yellow were of a past age, but, after all, does not the King of Great Britain and Ireland on State occasions ride in a most old-world coach. And then I noticed things came in threes. Three carts, three yellow palan- keens full of artificial flowers, three sedan chairs In THE CHIEN MEN FROM THE CURTAIN WALL. (See page 93) LOU NEAR THE AMERICAN LEGATION. (See page 60) THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 95 also yellow covered, and all around these groups were attendants clad in shimmering rainbow muslin and thick felt hats, from the pointed crown of which projected long yellow feathers. Slowly, slowly, the procession moved on, broken now and again by bands of soldiers in full marching order. There was a troop of cavalry of the Imperial Guard they told me, but how could it be imperial when their five-coloured lance pennons fluttering gaily in the air, clearly denoted the New Republic ? There was a detachment of mounted police in black and yellow — the most modern of uniforms — there were more attendants in gaily coloured robes carrying wooden halberds, embroidered fans, banners, and umbrellas, and the yellow palankeens with the artificial flowers were escorted by Buddhist lamas in yellow robes crossed with crimson sashes, each with a stick of smouldering incense in his hand. In those palan- keens were the dead woman's seals, her power, the power that she must now give up. I could see the smoke, and the scent of the incense rose to our nostrils as we stood on the wall forty feet above. Between the various groups, between the yellow lamas who dated from the days of the Buddha long before the Christ, between the khaki-clad troops and the yellow and black police, things of yesterday, came palace attendants tossing into the air white paper discs. The dead Empress would want money for her journey, and here it was, distributed with a lavish hand. It was only white paper, blank and soiled by the dust of the road, when I picked it up a little later on, but for her it would serve all purposes. The approach of the bier itself was heralded by the striking together of two slabs of wood by a 96 A WOMAN IN CHINA couple of attendants, and before it came, clad all in the white of mourning, the palace eunuchs who had guarded her privacy when in life; a few Court attendants in black, and then between lines of khaki- uniformed modern infantry in marching order, the bier covered with yellow satin, vivid, brilliant, embroidered with red phoenixes that marked her high rank — the dragon for the Emperor, the phoenix for his consort. The two pieces of wood clacked together harshly and the enormous bier moved on. It was mounted on immense yellow poles and borne by eighty men dressed in brilliant robes of varie- gated muslin, red being the predominating colour. They wore hats with yellow feathers coming out of the crown, and they staggered under their burden, as might the slaves in Nineveh or Babylon have faltered and groaned beneath their burdens, two thousand years ago. Out of the northern archway came the camels and the horses, the soldiers, the lamas, the eunuchs, out came all the quaint gay paraphernalia — umbrellas, and fans, palankeens, and sedan chairs, and banners — and slowly crossed the great courtyard, the arena ; a stop, a long pause, then on again, and the southern gate swallowed them up, again the clack of the strips of wood, and the mighty bier, borne on the shoulders of the Babylonish slaves. Slowly, slowly, then it stood still, and we felt as if it must stay there for ever, as if the eighty men who upheld it must be suffering unspeakable things. Once more the clack of the strips of wood, and the southern archway in due course swallowed it up, too, with the few halber- diers and the detachment of soldiery who completed the procession. THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 97 Outside the Chien Men was the railway station, the crowded people — crowded like Chinese flies in summer, and that is saying a great deal — were cleared away by the soldiers, the bier was lifted on to a car, the bands struck up a weird funeral march, the soldiers presented arms, the lama priests fell on their knees, and then very, very slowly the train steamed out of the station, and the last of the Manchu Empresses was borne to her long home. Was it impressive I asked myself as I went down the ramp? And the answer was a little difficult to find. Quaint and strange and Eastern, for the thing that has struck me so markedly in China was here marked as ever. It was like the paper money that was thrown with such lavish generosity into the air. Amongst all the magnificence was the bizarre note — that discordant touch of tawdriness. Beneath the gorgeous robes of the attendants, plainly to be seen, were tatters and uncleanliness, the soldiers in their ill-fitting uniforms looked makeshift, and the police wanted dusting. And yet — and again I must say and yet, for want of better words — behind it all was some reality, something that gripped like the haunting sound of the dirge, or the stately march of the camels that have defied all change. CHAPTER VI A TIME OF REJOICING The charm of Peking— A Chinese theatre— Electric light— The custodian of the theatre— Bargaining for a seat— The orchestra — The scenery of Shakespeare — Realistic gesture— A city wall — A mountain spirit — Gorgeous dresses — Bundles of towels — Women's gallery — Armed patrols — Rain in April — The food of the peasant— Famine— The value of a daughter — God be thanked. THE Legation Quarter in Peking, as I was reminded twenty times a day, is not China, it is not even Peking, but it is a pleasant place in which to stay ; a place where one may foregather and exchange ideas with one's kind, and yet whence one may go forth and see all Peking; more, may see places where still the foreigner is something to be stared at, and wondered at, and where the old, unchanging civilisation still goes on. Ordinarily if you would see something new, something that gives a fresh sensation, it is necessary to go out from among your kind and brave discomfort, or spend a small fortune to guard against that discomfort, but here, in Peking, you who are interested in such things may see an absolutely new world, and yet have all the comforts, except reading matter, to which you have been accustomed in London. It was no wonder I lingered in Peking. Always there was something GILDED SHOP-FRONT, PEKING. CORNER IN PEKING PAWNSHOP. A TIME OF REJOICING 99 new to see, always there was something fresh to learn, and at any moment, within five minutes, I could step out into another world, the world of Marco Polo, the world the Jesuit Fathers saw when first the Western nations were beginning to realise there were any countries besides their own. There are people — I have heard them — who complain that Peking is dull. Do not believe them. But, after all, perhaps I am not the best judge. As a young girl, trammelled by trying to do the correct thing and behave as a properly brought up young lady ought, I have sometimes, say at an afternoon call when I hope I was behaving prettily, found life dull, but since I have gone my own way I have been sad sometimes, lonely often, but dull never, and for that God be thanked. But Peking, I think, would be a very difficult place in which to be really dull. It is even possible to go to the theatre every night, but it is a Chinese theatre and that will go a long way. Nevertheless, I felt it was .a thing I should like to see ; so one evening two of my friends took me to the best theatre that was open. The best was closed for political reasons they said, because the new Government, not as sure of itself as it would like to be, did not wish the people to assemble together. This was a minor theatre, a woman's theatre; that is one where only women were the actors, quite a new departure in the Celestial world, for until about a year before the day of which I write, no woman was ever seen upon the stage, and her parts, as they were in the old days in Europe, were taken by men and boys. Even now, men and women never appear on the stage together, never, never do the sexes 100 A WOMAN IN CHINA mingle in China, and the women who act take the very lowest place in the social scale. One cold night in March three rickshaws put us down at an open doorway in the Chinese City outside the Tartar wall. The Chinese the greatest connoisseurs of pictures do not as yet think much of posters, though the British and American Tobacco Company is doing its best to educate them up to that level, so outside this theatre the door was not decorated with photographs of the lovely damsels to be seen within, clad in as few clothes as the censor will allow, but the intellects of the patrons were appealed to, and all around the doors were bright red sheets of paper, on which the delights offered for the evening were inscribed in characters of gold. We went along a narrow passage with a floor of hard, beaten earth, and dirty whitewashed walls on either side, along such a passage I could imagine went those who first listened to the sayings of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The light was dim, the thrifty Chinaman was not going to waste the precious and expensive light of compressed gas where it was not really needed, and from behind the wall came the weird strains of Chinese music. There appeared to be only one door, and here sat a fat and smiling Chinese, who explained to my friends that by the rules of the theatre, the men and women were divided, and that I must go to the women's gallery. They demurred. It would be very dull for me, who could not understand a word of the language, to sit alone. Could no exception be made in my favour? The doorkeeper was courteous as only a Chinese can be, and said that for his part, A TIME OF REJOICING 101 he had no objection ; but the custodian of the theatre, put there by the Government to ensure law and order, would object. I wanted badly to stay with these men who could explain to me all that was going on, so we sent for the custodian, another smiling gentleman, not quite so fat, in the black and yellow uniform of the military police. He listened to all we had to say, sym- pathised, but declared that the regulations must be carried out. My friends put it to him that the regulations were archaic, and that it was high time they were altered. He smilingly agreed. They were archaic, very ; but then you see, they were the regulations. He was here to see that they were carried out, and he suggested, as an alternative, that we should take one of the boxes at the side. The question of sitting in front was dismissed, and we gave ourselves to the consideration of a box for which six dollars, that is twelve shillings English currency, or three dollars American, were demanded. We demurred, it seems you always question prices in China. We told the doorkeeper that the price was very high, and that as we were sitting where we did not wish to sit, he ought to come down. He did. Shades of Keith and Prowse ! Two dollars ! We went up some steep and narrow steps of the most primitive order, were admitted to a large hall lighted by compressed gas — in Cambulac! here in the heart of an ancient civilisation — surrounded by galleries with fronts of a dainty lattice-work of polished wood, such as the Chinese employ for windows, and we took our places in a box, humbly furnished with bare benches and a wooden table. Just beneath us was the stage, and the play was in 102 A WOMAN IN CHINA full swing — actors, property men, and orchestra all on at once. It was large and square, raised a little above the people in the body of the hall and sur- rounded by a little low screen of the same dainty lattice-work. At the back was the orchestra, com- posed only of men in ordinary coolie dress — dark blue cotton — with long queues. There were casta- nets, and a drum, cymbals, native fiddle, and various brazen instruments that looked like brass trays, and they all played untiringly, with an energy worthy of a better cause, and with the apparent intention — it couldn't have been so really — of drowning the actors. Yet taken altogether the result was strangely quaint and Eastern. The entertainment consisted of a number of little plays lasting from half an hour to about an hour. There were never more than half a dozen people on the stage at once, very often only two in the play altogether, and what it was all about we could only guess after all, for even my friends, who could speak ordinary Chinese fluently, could not understand much that was said. Possibly this was because every actor, instead of using the ordinary conversa- tional tone, adapted as we adapt it to the stage, used a high, piercing falsetto that was extremely un- natural, and reminded me of nothing on this earth that I know of except perhaps a pig-killing. Still even I gathered something of the story of the play as it progressed, for the gestures of these women, unlike their voices, were extremely dramatic, and some of the situations were not to be mistaken. Scenery was as it was in Shakespeare's day. It was understood. But for all the bare crudity, the dresses of the actors which belonged to a previous age, A TIME OF REJOICING 103 whether they were supposed to represent men or women, were most rich and beautiful. The general, with his hideously painted face and his long black beard of thread, wore a golden embroidered robe that must have been worth a small fortune ; a soldier, apparently a sort of Dugald Dalgety, who pits him- self against a scholar clad in modest dark colours, appeared in a blue satin of the most delicate shade, beautifully embroidered with gorgeous lotus flowers and palms ; and the principal ladies, who were really rather pretty in spite of their highly painted faces and weird head-dresses, wore robes of delicate love- liness that one of my companions, whose business it was to know about such matters, told me must have been, like the general's, of great value. The comic servant or country man wore a short jumper and a piece of white paper and powder about his nose. It certainly did make him look funny. The dignified scholar was arrayed all in black, the soldier wore the gayest of embroidered silks and satins, the land- lady of the inn or boarding-house, a pleasant, smiling woman with roses in her hair and tiny maimed feet, had a pattern of black lace-work painted on her fore- head, and when the male characters had to be very fierce indeed, they wore long and flowing beards, beards to which no Chinaman, I fear me, can ever hope to attain, for the Chinaman is not a hairy man. When a gallant gentleman with tight sleeves which proclaimed him a warrior, and a long beard of bright red thread which made him a very fierce warrior indeed, snapped his fingers and lifted up his legs, lifted them up vehemently, you knew that he was getting over a wall or mounting his horse. You could take your choice. A mountain, the shady 104 A WOMAN IN CHINA side of it, was represented by one panel of a screen which leaned drunkenly against a very ordinary chair, giving shelter to a very evil spirit with a dress that represented a leopard, and a face of the grim- mest and most terrifying of those animals. This was a play that required much property to be displayed, for a general with a face painted all black and white and a long black beard, with his army of five, took refuge behind a stout city wall that was made of thin blue cotton stuff supported on four bamboo poles, and this convenient wall marched on to the stage in the hands of a couple of stout coolies. A wicked mountain spirit outside the walls did terrible things. Ever and again flashes of fire burst out after his speech, and I presume you were not supposed to see the coolie who manipulated that fire, though he stood on the stage as large as any actors in the piece. It is hard, too, talking in that high falsetto against the shrieking, strident notes of the music, so naturally the actors constantly required a little liquid refresh- ment, and an attendant was prompt in offering tea in tiny round basins; and nobody saw anything incongruous in his standing there with the teapot handy, and in slack moments taking a sip him- self. The fun apparently consisted in repartee, and every now and then, the audience, who were silent and engrossed, instead of applauding spontan- eously, ejaculated, as if at a word of command, " Hao ! " which means " Good ! " That audience was the best-behaved and most attentive I have ever seen. It consisted mostly of men, as far as I could seeL of the middle class. A TIME OF REJOICING 105 They were packed close together, with here and there a little table or bench among them ; and up and down went vendors of apples, oranges, pieces of sugar-cane, cakes and sweetmeats. There were also people who supplied hot, damp towels. A man stood here and there in the audience, and from the outer edge of the theatre, came hurtling to him, over the heads of the people, a bundle of these towels. For a cent or so apiece he distributed them, the members of the audience taking a refreshing wipe of face and head and hands and handing the towels back. When the purveyor of the towels had used up all his stock, and got them all back again, he tied them up into a neat bundle, and threw them back the way they had come, receiving a fresh stock in return. Never did a bundle of towels fail in reaching its appointed place, and scores of cents must the providers have pocketed. For the delight of ventilation is not appreciated in China, and to say that theatre was stuffy is a mild way of putting it. The warm wet towel must have given a sort of refreshment. They offered us some up in the digni- fied seclusion of our box, but we felt we could sustain life without washing our faces with doubtful towels during the progress of the entertainment. Tea was brought, too, excellent Chinese tea, and I drank it with pleasure. I drink Chinese tea without either milk or sugar as a matter of course now; but that night at the Chinese theatre I was only trying it and wondering could I drink it at all. Opposite us was the women's gallery, full of Chinese and Manchu ladies, with high head- dresses and highly painted faces. The Chinese ladies often paint their faces, but their attempts at 106 A WOMAN IN CHINA decoration pale before that of the Manchus, who put on the colour with such right goodwill that every woman when she is dressed in her smartest, looks remarkably like a sign-board. The wonder is that anyone could possibly be found who could admire the unnatural effect. Someone, I suppose, there is, or it would not be done, but no men went near the women's gallery that evening. It would have been the grossest breach of decorum for a man to do any such thing, and the painted ladies drank their tea by themselves. Somewhere about midnight, earlier than usual, consequent, I imagine, upon the disturbed state of the country, the entertainment ended with a perfect crash of music, and the most orderly audience in the world went out into the streets of the Chinese City, into the clear night. Only in very recent years, they tell me, have the streets of Peking been lighted. Formerly the people went to bed at dusk, but they seem to have taken very kindly to the change, for the streets were thronged. There were people on foot, people in rickshaws, people in the springless Peking carts, and important personages with outriders and footmen in the glass broughams beloved by the Chinese ; and there were the military police everywhere, now at night with rifles across their shoulders. Here, disciplining this most orderly crowd, they struck me as being strangely incongruous. I wondered at those police then, and I wonder still. What are they for? Whatever the reason, there they were at every few yards. Never have I had such a strange home-coming from a theatre. Down on us forty feet high frowned the walls built in past ages, we crossed the Beggars' A TIME OF REJOICING 107 Bridge of glorious marble, we went under the mighty archway of the Chien Men, and we entered the Legation Quarter guarded like a fortress, and I went to bed meditating on the difference between a Chinese play and a modern musical comedy. They have, I fancy, one thing in common. They are interesting enough to see for the first time, but a little of them goes a long way. I went to bed under a clear and cloudless sky, and the next morning, to my astonishment, it was raining. I have, of course, seen rain many, many times, and many, many times have I seen heavier rain than fell all this April day in Peking, but never before, not even in my own country where ram is the great desideratum, have I seen rain better worth recording. It was indeed this April day rain at last! " To everything there is a season," says the preacher, and the spring is the time for a little rain in Northern China. In England people suppose it rains three hundred and sixty days out of the three hundred and sixty-five, except in Leap Year when we manage to get in another rainy day, but as a matter of fact, I believe the average is about one hundred and fifty wet days in the year, with a certain number more in which clouds in the sky blot out the sunshine. In the north of China, on the other hand, there had been, to all intents and purposes, no cloud in the sky since the summer rains of 1912, till this rain in April which I looked out upon. Is not rain like that worth recording? Still more do I feel it is worth recording when I think of what that day's rain, that seemed so little to me, meant to millions of people. All through the bitter cold winter the 108 A WOMAN IN CHINA country lay in the grip of the frost, but the sun reigned in a heaven of peerless blue, and the light was brilliant with a brilliancy that makes the sun- shine of a June day in England a poor, pale thing. The people counted for their crops on the rain that would come in due season, the rain in the spring. March came with the thaw, and the winds from the north lifted the loose soil into the air in clouds of dust. But March passed alternating brilliant sunshine and clouds of dust, and there was never a cloud in the sky, never a drop of moisture for the gasping earth. April came — would it go on like this till June? Rain that comes in due season is necessary to the crops that are the wealth, nay the very life of Northern China. From the beams of the peasant's cottage hang the cobs of corn, each one counted ; in jars or boxes is his little store of grain, millet — just bird-seed in point of fact — he has a few dried persimmons per- haps and — nothing else. Twice a day the house- wife measures out the grain for the meal — she knows, the tiniest child in the household knows exactly how long it will last with full measure, how it may be spun out over a few more dreary, hunger-aching days, how then, if the rain has not come, if the crops have failed, famine will stalk in the land, famine, cruel, pitiless, and from his grip there is no escaping. Think of it, as I did that April day in Peking, when I watched the rain pelting down. Think of the dumb, helpless peasant watching the cloudless blue sky and the steadily diminishing store of grain, watching, hoping, for the faintest wisp of white cloud that shall give promise of a little moisture. GATHERING IN KAOLIANG FOR THRESHING. A THRESHING FLOOR. A TIME OF REJOICING 109 They tell me, those who know, that the Chinaman is a fatalist, that he never looks so far ahead, but do they not judge him with Western eyes? True he seldom complains, but he tills his fields so carefully that he must see in imagination the crops they are to produce, he must know, how can he help knowing, that if there be no harvest, there is an end to his home, his family, his children ; that if perchance his life be spared, it will be grey and empty, broken, desolate, scarce worth living. Every scanty posses- sion will have to be sold to buy food in a ruinously high market, even the loved children, and no one who has seen them together can doubt that the Chinese deeply love their children, must go, though for the little daughter whose destination will be a brothel of one of the great cities, but two dollars, four pitiful shillings, may be hoped for, and when that is eaten up, the son sold into slavery will bring very little more. To sell their children sounds terrible, but what can they do? Some must be sacrificed that the others may have a chance of life, and even if they are not sacrificed, their fate is to die slowly under the bright sky, in the relentless sunshine. This is the spectre that haunts the peasant. This is the thing that has befallen his fathers, that has befallen him, that may befall him again any year, that no care on his part can guard him from, that the clear sky for ever threatens. " From plague, pestilence and famine, Good Lord deliver us." Does ever that Litany to the Most High go up in English cathedral with such prayerful fervour, such thorough realisation of what is meant by the 110 A WOMAN IN CHINA supplication, as is in the heart of the peasant mother in China, carefully measuring out the grain for the meal. Only she would put it the other way. " From famine, and the plague and pestilence that stalk in the wake of the famine, oh pitiful, merciful God deliver us ! " And when I took all this in, when I heard men who had seen the suffering describe it, was it any wonder that I rejoiced at the dull grey sky, at the sound of the rain on the roof, at the water rushing down the gutters. On the gently sloping hill-sides of Manchuria, where they grow the famous bean, the hill-sides that I had seen in their winter array, on the wide plains of Mongolia, where only the far horizon bounds the view, and you march on to a yet farther horizon where the Mongol tends his flocks and herds, and the industrious Chinaman, pushing out beyond the pro- tecting wall, has planted beans and sown oats, in Honan, where the cotton and the maize and the kao- liang grow, all along the gardens and grain-fields of Northern China, had come the revivifying rain. The day before, under the blue sky, lay the bare brown earth, acres and acres, miles and miles of it, carefully tilled, nowhere in the world have I seen such carefully tilled land, full of promise, but of promise only, of a rich harvest. Then, not hoped for so late, a boon hardly to be prayed for, welcome as sunshine never was welcomez came the rain, six hours steady rain, and the spectre of famine, ever so close to the Chinese peasant, for a time drifted into the background with old, unhappy, long- forgotten things. Next morning on all the khaki- coloured country outside Peking was a tinge of A TIME OF REJOICING 111 green, and we knew that a bountiful harvest was ensured, knew that soon the country would be a beautiful emerald. The house-mother, the patient, uncomplaining, ignorant, Chinese house-mother, might fill her pot joyfully, the house-father might look at his little daughter, with the red thread twisted in her hair, and know, that for a year at least, she was safe in his sheltering arms, for the blessed rain had come, God given. Peking in the rain is an uncomfortable place. It is built for the sunshine. The streets of the city were knee-deep in mud, the hu t'ungs were impas- sable for a man on foot unless he would be mud up to the knees, for there had been six hours solid down- pour, and every moment it continued was worth pounds to the country. What was a twenty-five million loan with its heavy interest, against such a rain as this? More than one hundred thousand people were affected by the downpour, were glad and rejoicing that day at the good-fortune that had befallen them. This mass of human beings, at the very lowest computation had considerably more than twenty-five million pounds rained down upon it in the course of six hours. There came with that rain, that blurred the windows of my room, prosperity for the land, and, for a time at least, peace, for peace and good harvests in China are sometimes inter- changeable terms. What did it matter to Northern China at that moment that the nations were bicker- ing over the loan, that America was promising, Britain hesitating, Russia threatening ? What did it matter whether Emperor, President, or Dictator, was in power? What did it matter that the national representatives hesitated to come to the capital? 112 A WOMAN IN CHINA What did it matter what mistakes they made ? What does the peasant tilling his field, the woman filling her cooking-pot know about these things? What do they care ? A mightier factor than these, a greater power than man's had stepped in. God be thanked, in China that day it rained. CHAPTER VII ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD Courteous Americans— Nankou Pass— Beacon towers— Inaccessible hills — " Balbus has built a wall " — Tiny towns — " Watch- man, what of the night? " — Deserted watch-towers — - Thoughtful Chinese waiter— Ming Tombs— Chinese carrying Chair — Stony way — Greatest p'ia lou in China — Amphitheatre among the barren hills — Tomb of Yung Lo — Trunks of sandal-wood trees — Enterprising Chinese guard. WHEREVER I might wander in China, and with the rumours of war that were in the air, it looked as if my wanderings were going to be somewhat restricted, to one place I was bound to wander, and that was the Great Wall of China. Even in the days of my grandmother's curios, I had heard about that, one of the wonders of the world, and I could never have left China without seeing it. " You can do it in a couple of days," said the young man, who had chastened me gently when first I entered Peking. " I'm going up on Tuesday. You'd better come along. The poet's coming too," he added. The poet, a real live poet, who thought a deal more about his binding than his public, was like me I think, he did not like seeing places in crowds, and at first he did not give us much of his society. There was also a millionaire, an American million- aire, his little wife, his big daughter, and his angular 113 H 114 A WOMAN IN CHINA maiden sister. They had an observation-car fixed on to the train, and the guard came along and said that if we ordinary travellers, who were not million- aires, cared to come in the car, the millionaire would be very pleased. I have travelled so much by myself that the chance of congenial company once in a way was delightful, but I did feel we ought not to have taken the train to the Nankou Pass. A mule litter, or a Peking cart would have been so much more suitable. However, it is as well to be as comfortable as possible. From the north came China's foes, the sturdy horsemen from Mongolia, the mountain men from the Manchurian Hills, and because the peaceful, industrious inhabitants of the rich, alluvial plains feared greatly the raiders, they, just at the Nankou Pass, where these inaccessible hills might be passed, built watch-towers and kept ward. There they stand, even to this day, upon jutting peaks where the pass opens into the plain, grey stone watch- towers with look-outs and slits for the archers, and beacon-towers which could flash the fiery warning that should rouse the country to the south. For thirteen miles we went up the pass, the cleft that the stream, babbling cheerfully now in April over its water- worn rocks, has carved for itself through the stony hills, and its weird beauty never palls. Always there were the hills, broken to pieces, tossed together by the hand of a giant, there were great clefts in them, vistas looking up stony and inaccessible valleys, gullies that are black as if a burning fiery furnace had been set in their midst, little pockets where the stream widened and there THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. (See Page 1 16) TEMPLE IN TOMB OF YUNG LO. (Seepage 124) ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 115 was a patch of green pasture, some goats grazing, a small, neat farm-house and fruit-trees, pink and white, almond, peach, or pear, a wealth of blossom. On every patch of those barren hill-sides where a tree might grow, a tree — a fruit-tree — because the Chinaman is strictly utilitarian, had been planted; only here and there, over the sacred graves of China, there was a patch of willow, tender with the delicate dainty green of early spring. Always in China there are people ; and here there were tiny towns packed together on ledges of the eternal hills, with the fruit-trees and the willows that shade the graves, and there were walls — walls that stretch up to the inaccessible portion of the hills, where only a goat might climb, and no invad- ing army could possibly pass. So numerous were these walls that my cheery young friend suggested that if ever a village head-man had a little spare time on his hands he remarked: "Oh, I say, here's a fine day and plenty of stones, let's go out and build a wall." And then next day the villagers in the next hamlet looking out said, " By Jove, Balbus, no Wong, has built a wall. We can't be beat." But I don't think in the old days the villagers on those hills ever took life quite as lightly as that. Over and over again it is repeated, the watch- towers on the hills and the strips of wall running down into the valley, walls with wide tops on which companies of archers might stand, protected by a breast-work slit for arrows, with a wall behind again to which they might retire if they were beaten, making the space between hard to hold, even for a victorious enemy. Always there were the walls and watch-towers as we went on up the valley, telling 116 A WOMAN IN CHINA in their own way, the story of the strenuous lives of the men who lived here in the old days. Down the mule track these walls command came an endless company of people, wandering along, slowly, persistently, as they have wandered since the dawn of history. They had mules, and donkeys, and horses — muzzled so that they cannot eat the tufts of herbage by the roadside — laden with grain, and hides, and all manner of merchandise. There were blue-coated coolies trudging along with bamboos across their shoulders, their heavy loads dangling from either end ; and there were laden camels, the ragged dromedaries from Mongolia, long lines of them, picking their way among the stones along the road by the side of the stream. The camels, and the walls, and the watch-towers go together, they enhance the wonder and the charm of this road to the Great Wall. Up and up we went, up the valley, past the great archway where is the Customs barrier even to-day, and on, higher and higher, deeper into the hills, till ahead, crowning them, climbing their steepest points, bridging their most inaccessible declivities, clear-cut against the blue sky, I saw what I had come out to see, one of the wonders of the world, the Great Wall of China! Here among the stony, arid hills, that anywhere else in the world would be left to the rock-doves and the rabbits, we came upon a piece of man's handiwork that for ages has cried aloud to those who have eyes to see, or ears to hear, of the colossal industry of China, nay of more than that, of the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the community. On and on went the Wall, up and up and up, cliinbing steadily, falling, climbing again, ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 117 and again dropping into the valleys. There were watch-towers and a broad highway along its top; here stood the sentries, who kept ceaseless watch and ward looking ever for the invader, whether he came in countless array, a conquering army, or in small raiding bands that might take toll of the rich crops to the south, steal a few women, or hold a wealthy squire up to ransom. "Watchman, what of the night? What of the night? Is the road clear to the north? Hist! Hist! What is that beneath the loom of the hills? What is the sound that comes up on the wind ? " " There are always dark shadows in the loom of the hills, and it is only a stone falling down the gully." "Ah, but the dark shadows have hidden a band of Manchurian archers, and the stone might be loosened by the hoof of a Mongol pony. Watch- man! Watchman, what of the night? What of the night?" That was the way I felt about it as, having got out of the train, and taken a chair, we made our way through the desolate country to the Nankou Pass, and I, forgetting all else, stood gazing my fill at the Wall I had heard about ever since I was a little child. Dreaming of what it must have been in the past, I forgot, for the moment, the present, and the passing of time. I was alone, as the poet wished to be, and then a high-pitched voice brought me to this present day again. " Say Momma," said the millionaire — we thought he was a millionaire because of the observation-car, but he may have been just more ordinarily well- to-do than a writer of books — "where's Cora?" 118 A WOMAN IN CHINA " Search me," said Momma placidly. He didn't search her, perhaps because, seeing she was but five feet and small and thin at that, he did not think it likely that Cora, who was a buxom young person close on six feet, could possibly be concealed anywhere about her person. The maiden aunt pointed an accusing finger up the rough, grass-grown stones that make the top of the Wall. " Skipping like a young ram," she snorted, and then all three raised their voices, and those old- world rocks rang with shouts of "Cora! Cora! ! Cora! ! !" I trembled for the poet's feelings, if he were anywhere within range, but after all, in their own way and time, I dare say the keepers of the Wall were just as commonplace. My companion, who was steadily making his way up the Wall beside Cora, turned at the ear-piercing yells, looked at his watch, spoke to the girl, and came slowly back while she quickened her pace for a moment, as if determined to get over the other side of the hill, whatever happened. " The young gentleman has the most sense," opined Momma. " She'll come now he's turned," said the maiden aunt acidly, and even though she did come, down across the rough stones, by the ruined watch-towers, I felt the insinuation was unjust. Those watch-towers are empty now, deserted and desolate. No thoughtful captain, weighed down with responsibility, looks through their arched windows, no javelin men stand on the stone steps, no sentry tramps along peering out to the north. THE NANKOU PASS. GATEWAY IN THE WALL, NANKOU PASS. ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 119 The Wall is tumbling into disrepair, the grass and weeds grow up between the stones, and the wonder of the world is a mighty ruin, stately even in its decay, for never again beneath the sun will such another wall be built. Look at it climbing up those hills, cutting the blue sky, bridging the gullies, and think of the tears, and sweat, and blood, that went to the building of it ! That foundations may be well and truly laid, so says tradition, they must be laid on a living human being. It is one way of saying that on sacrifice our lives are based, that for every good thing in life something of value must be given ; so to the building of the Wall, that was to hold China safe, went hundreds and thousands of lives, and its upkeep and its watching cost more than we can well imagine. We went back to the Ching Er Hotel at Nankou, the little hotel close to the railway and plunged once more into modern life for, unpretentious and kept by Chinese as it is, it still represented the present day. It is just one big room, divided into a hall and many little rooms by so many sheets of paper, so that the man in the room in front may whisper and nothing be lost upon the man in the room at the back, six rooms away, while to have a bath is a matter of public interest, for the smallest splash can be heard from one end of the building to the other. Nevertheless, I shall always have friendly feelings towards that little hotel, where they lodged me so hardly, and fed me so well. They considered one in every way, too. The poet had evidently not been troubled by the family affection of the millionaires, he walked back from the 120 A WOMAN IN CHINA Wall, and was so full of enthusiasm he forgave my presence, came to me as I sat at dinner and, covered with the dust of the way as he was, stood, and just as I should expect of a poet, waxed eloquent on the glories he had seen. The Chinese waiter, with shaven head and long blue smock, let him go on for a few minutes, then he took him gently and respectfully by the sleeve. " Vash," he said solemnly, without the ghost of a smile on his face ; " vash," and the poet came to earth with a laugh. We both laughed. " Well, yes," he said looking at his dust-begrimed person. " I suppose I had better wash. Ill be back in a moment. May I sit at your table ? " And next day I went to see the Ming Tombs. St Paul's and Westminster are set in the heart of a mighty city, ever by the peaceful dead sounds the clamour of the living, yet the living forget, in spite of the daily reminder they forget. In China, where graves dot every field, and are part and parcel of the lives of the people, they bury the honoured dead far apart from the rush and roar of everyday life, and they never forget. The Nankou Pass is two hours from Peking, and the tombs of the Ming Emperors are nine miles from the Nankou Pass, set in the very heart of the hills. The entrance to the pass is barren and lonely enough, but the extra nine miles is like journeying into the wilderness where the scapegoat, burdened with the sins of the community, was driven by the Israelites. It is a long, long nine miles over a stony mule track where only a donkey, a pony, or a chair can go, and yet here centuries ago, when it was ten times farther away, China buried her dead, the men who sat on ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 121 the Dragon Throne, and bridged for the nation the gap that lies between mortal men and high Heaven. It is lonely now when the roadway of the West brings Nankou close to the capital, it must have been unspeakably lonely in the days before the opening of the railway. A chair seemed to me the only way to get there, a chair borne by four blue- clad coolies with queues wrapped round their shaven heads, and while my companion rode a pony, in a chair I swung over the stony narrow track away towards the hills. The hills were rugged and barren, the same hills that the Wall crossed; on their stony sides no green thing could ever grow, and they were brown, and pink, and grey, and when a white cloud gathered here and there in the far- away blue sky, the shadows lay across them in great purple patches. And the road was stony, barely to be seen, impossible for wheeled traffic, even the primitive wheeled traffic of Northern China. I doubt even if a wheelbarrow could have gone along it. I doubted often whether the heaps of stones on the slope could possibly be a road, but the coolies seemed to know, and went steadily on, changing the pole from one shoulder to the other so often that it gave me a feeling of brutality that I should use such a means of locomotion. The only person who was comfortable was I. My companion rode beside me sometimes. He felt himself responsible for my well-being, and it was good to be looked after. "Are you all right?" All right! If the country round was desolate, the sunshine was glorious, the air, the clear, dry air of Northern China was as invigorating as cham- 122 A WOMAN IN CHINA pagne, and I knew that I could go on for ever and feel myself much blessed. The Ming Tombs were but an excuse ; it was well and more than well to be here in the open spaces of the earth, to draw deep breaths, to feel that neither past nor future mattered ; here beneath the open sky in the golden sunshine swinging along, somewhere, anywhere, I had all I could ask of life. And always it was a stony way. Sometimes the coolies climbed up a bank of loose stones that slipped and rolled away as they passed, sure-footed as goats, sometimes the stones were piled on either side and a sort of track meandered in between, sometimes they were scattered all over the plain in such masses that even the industrious Chinese seemed to have given up the task of clearing them away as hopeless, and had simply tilled the land in between. For this was no uninhabited desert, deso- late as it seemed. Always we came across little stone-built hamlets, there were men and women working in the fields, and rosy-cheeked children stood by the wayside and waved their little hands to the passing stranger. There would be the sound of bells, and a string of mules or donkeys came picking tjieir way as soberly as the coolies them- selves, and left much to themselves by their ragged drivers. They looked of the poorest, these people, men and women clad much alike in dirty blue that, torn here and there, let out the cotton-wool which padded it for winter warmth. Probably they knew nothing, nothing of the world beyond their little dusty, stony hamlets, they prayed perhaps for the rain that should moisten their dusty, stony fields, and give them the mess of meal, the P IA LOU AT ENTRANCE TO HOLY WAY. HOLY WAY — MING TOMBS. ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 123 handful of persimmons that is all they ask of Fate, and they watched the few strangers who came to visit the tombs, and perhaps never even wondered what the outside world might be like, if it gave to those who lived there anything more than fell to the lot of the humble dwellers on the road to the Ming Tombs. And at last in the pleasant noontide we came to the p'ia lou at the entrance, the greatest p'ia lou in China, that land of p'ia lous, and standing there I realised, not only the beauty of the archway, but the wonder of the place the Mings had chosen to be theirs for all time. It is a great amphitheatre among these barren hills. St Paul's or Westminster could not hold these tombs, for Hyde Park might be put in this valley and yet not half fill it ; and round it, set against the base of the hills, in great courts enclosed in pinkish-red walls, the counterpart of those round the Forbidden City, and planted with cypress and pine, are the various tombs. A magni- ficent resting-place, truly! And the dignity is enhanced by the desolate approach. Through the p'ia lou is the famous Holy Way, the avenue of marble animals, of which all the world has so often heard. What mystic significance had the marble elephant and the camel, the kneeling horse and the sedate scholar? Possibly they had no more than the general suggestion that all things did honour to the mighty dead laid away in their tombs. A paved way runs between them, paved with great blocks of marble brought from the hills, placed there in bygone ages by the hands of slaves, sweating and struggling under their loads, or possibly by men just exactly like the men who were bearing me, men slaves in all but name, who each day must earn a 124 A WOMAN IN CHINA few pence or go under in the pitiful struggle for life. The paved way that runs on for three miles is worn and broken, the grass comes up between the blocks, the bridges are falling into disrepair, but these things are trifles in the face of the amphitheatre set among the eternal hills, the blue sky and the sun- shine, these are a memorial here, a memorial that makes the work of men's hands but a small thing. Nevertheless that work is very wonderful. No one, I suppose, except he were making Chinese art or antiquities a special study, would visit every tomb in turn. It would take a week, and we, like the majority of visitors, contented ourselves with that of Yung Lo, the principal one. And here is a curious thing worth noting, a thing that possibly would happen nowhere else in the world, showing how irrevocably China feels herself bound to the past. The Ming Emperor was a Chinese, and the Republic that has just overthrown the Manchu Dynasty, is also Chinese, so as a mark of respect, they have repaired, after a fashion, this, the tomb of the greatest of the Ming Emperors. That is to say — oh China! they have whitewashed the marble, painted the golden-brown tiled roof of the temple, and swept and garnished the great audience hall. A tomb in China reminds me in no way of death. We entered through a door studded with heavy brazen knobs a grass-grown courtyard, where were trees, pine and cypress. We went along a paved way, and before us was a building with a curved roof, with the tiles broken here and there ; it was set on a platform reached by flights of marble steps, or rather the flights of steps were on either side, while in the centre was a ramp on which was beautifully ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 125 carved in relief the dragon, the sign of Empire, and the horse, which I have heard some people say is the sign of good-fortune. On the platform, through all the cracks in the marble, violets were forcing their way, making a purple carpet under the golden sunshine. We crossed to a hall, which is surely most wonderful. The light was subdued a little, and the hall that contains in its centre the memorial tablet of red and gold is as magnificent in its proportions as York Minster. The roof is supported by trunks of sandal-wood trees, smooth, straight, and brown, they run sixty feet up to the roof, and after more than five hundred years the air is heavy with the sensuous scent of them. Where did they get that sandal-wood, those trunks all of such noble proportions? They must have cost an immense sum of money, for they never grew in Northern China. Another courtyard is behind this hall of audience, where is a marble fountain, whitewashed, and a spring that is supposed to cure all ills of the eyes, and a door apparently leading into a hill-side, behind which is a grove of cypress trees. The door being opened, we entered a paved tunnel which led upwards to a chamber in the heart of the hill, whence two more ramps led still upwards, one to the right and the other to the left, into the open air again. Here the coffin was placed in the mound through the top of the ramp. The stones with which the ramps were paved were worn and slippery, the angle was steep, the leaves from the trees out- side had drifted in, and the effect was strange and weird. Nowhere else but in China could such a thing be. And right on top of the mound, over the 126 A WOMAN IN CHINA actual grave, is another memorial tablet to the dead Emperor, looking away out over the valley to the stony hills, that are the wall which hedges off this sacred place from the outside world. And Yung Lo, the Emperor, died in the first half of the fifteenth century. How many people in England know or care, where Henry V. lies buried? The evening was falling when we went back by the stony mule path, by the little stony villages, where the mothers were calling their children in from the fields, and the men were gathering at the meeting-places for the evening gossip. Of what did they talk? Of the Emperor dead in his tomb hundreds of years ago ? Of the New Republic away in the capital? The Emperor seemed somehow nearer to the village people. There was the sound of quaint, tuneless, Eastern music, and sitting with the sun on his sightless face, surrounded by a listening little crowd, was a blind musician holding across his knees a sort of lute. The people turned and watched as the strangers and the aliens passed, and the musician thrummed on. Light or dark was the same to him. The clouds piled now in the western sky, and the stony land looked unutterably dreary in the gathering gloom, the coolies must have been weary, but they went steadily on, chang- ing the chair pole from one shoulder to the other. Tne slopes that had been hard to scramble up were harder to scramble down, but they made no com- plaint. This was their work, and the night was coming when they might rest. The night was coming fast, but we were nearing the end of our journey. The hills looked cold, and gloomy, and threatening, and then the heavy clouds above them w E'-a to ^ o <» « 3> w <». s - ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 127 broke, and through them burst the setting sun in all the glory of silver, and purple, and ruddy gold. Down on the barren hills, like a benediction, fell his last rays, telling of hope for the morrow, and we turned into the yard of the little inn, and the coolies bowed themselves to the ground, one after the other, because they got a pitiful little over and above their hard-earned wages. And the next day we went back to Peking, back through the pass. The Ching Er Hotel provided tiffin on the train, curried chicken and mutton chops, some form of cakey pudding, cheese, and bread and butter, all excellent in its way — and we were all so amiable, even the poet had come down from the clouds and joined us, that we only laughed when we found we were expected to pile all these good things on one plate, and do it quickly before the train left! As we were eating it, the guard came round and collected one dollar and ninety cents extra apiece, because we had ridden on the observation-car. We paid, and said hard things about the millionaire, but a little more knowledge of ways Chinese has con- vinced me we accused him unjustly. I feel sure that enterprising and observant guard took stock of us, saw that we did not know the American, and collected, for the benefit of a highly intelligent, and truly deserving Chinese railway official. We seldom think of the Chinaman with the glamour of romance, but this Nankou Pass is well- calculated to upset all our former ideas, and give us a setting for China such as might apply to barbaric Italy or Provence of the Middle Ages, only — and it is well to remember, what we barbarians of the West 128 A WOMAN IN CHINA are apt to forget — that in China, things have always moved in mightier orbits, that where there were ten men in the Western world, you may count a hundred in China, for a hundred a thousand, for a thousand ten thousand. What must the Nankou Pass have been like on some bitter night in winter, when the stars were like points of steel, and the stream was frozen in a grip of iron, and the still air was keen, and hard, and cold, with the bitter, biting sting of the northern winter? When the fires blazed in the beacons on the hill- sides, flinging their ruddy light, their message of fear and warning. The keepers of the Wall were failing, the Mongol hordes were pouring over the barrier, and it behoved every man who saw that ruddy glare to arm and come to the keeping of the Pass, to die in its guarding. They died and they held it, and they died and the invaders flung their bodies to the wolves and the crows, and swept on and took the country beyond for their own. But the country to the south is China, China of the ages and she absorbs nations, Mongol or Manchu, or men from her western bordersA and makes them one with herself. This is the message I read in the Nankou Pass. I have changed my mind again and again, and generally I do not believe what I read that day. But it was firmly impressed on me then. China is not dead. The spirit that conceived and built that mighty Wall is a living thing still. All down the Pass, alongside the age-old mule track, runs a new road, a road of the West, a railway, planned, and laid, and built entirely by Chinese without any Western help except such as the sons of China got ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 129 for themselves in the schools of America and Eng- land. And it is not only well and truly laid, as well as, and better than, many a Western railway, but behold the spirit of China has entered in, the spirit, not of her poor, struggling for a crust of bread, a mess of meal, but the spirit of the men who con- ceived and planned the Wall, the beautiful Lama Temple, or the spacious courtyards and glorious palaces of the Forbidden City. They have built embankments and curves, tunnels and archways that are things of beauty, and glorious to look upon, as surely never was railway before. They have built, and it is saying a great deal, a railway that is worthy of the Nankou Pass. They are the lineal descend- ants of the men, who, two thousand years ago, built the Great Wall. Hail and all hail! And then a railway man talked to me. The rail- way might be beautiful, but it was costly beyond all excuse. The best of the ideas had come from Europe, certainly these highly civilised, these over- civilised people might be trusted to see and make a beautiful thing, the question was, could they be trusted to manage a railway as a railway should be managed? He thought not. They had somehow lost force. Well, we shall see. One thing seems certain, between us Westerners and the Chinese, is a great gulf fixed. We look across and sometimes we wonder, and sometimes we pity, and sometimes we admire, but we cannot understand. CHAPTER VIII TWO CHARITIES The manufacturing of the blind — " Before born " — The Rev. Hill Murray — " The Message " — Geography — Marriage — A brave little explorer — Massacre of the blind — Deposits of one tael — A missionary career — The charitable Chinese — A Buddhist orphanage — Invitation to a funeral — An intellectual abbot — The youngest orphan — Pity and mercy. THE blind musician I had seen playing to the village folk with the setting sun, that he could not see, on his face, remained in my mind. Why especially, I do not know, for it is a common enough sight in China. Terrible as is the affliction, the Chinese, by their insanitary habits, more or less manufacture their blind. The cult of the bath is not theirs yet, they live, apparently happily, amongst filthy surround- ings, they neglect the eyes of the new-born child, they suffer from smallpox, and ophthalmia, and the barber with his infected razor shaves, not only close round the outside, but with the laudable intention of making all clean and neat, as far down as he can get round the delicate inside of the eyelid. The result one may see any day in the streets of Peking, or any Chinese town. A beggar in China is always a horrible-looking object. He belongs to a guild. His intention is to attract pity, and it would seem to him going the wrong way about it, to begin by being neat and clean. Besides, though many people 130 TWO CHARITIES 131 in China are neat, I suspect very few of them are what we arrogant Westerners would describe as clean, and among a dirty people, the blind beggar stands out, pre-eminent, as the filthiest creature I have ever seen. On the roadside, again and again in a country place where many people are passing, I have seen a half-naked man, who looked as if he had never since his birth even looked at water, clad, or rather half-clad, in filthy rags with raw red sores where his eyes should have been. He was so horrible, so ghastly a specimen of humanity that he seemed almost beyond pity. And yet a blind person always receives a certain amount of respect and con- sideration from the Chinese, even from the poorest Chinese. Never in his hearing would the roughest rickshaw coolie call him " Hsia Tze " that is " Blind man." That would be discourteous. Though he be only a beggar, forlorn, hungry, unkempt, he is still addressed by all passers as " Hsien Sheng," " Before Born," a title of respect that is given to teachers, doctors, and men of superior rank and age. Hard though, in spite of the respect that is paid them, must be the lot of those who are handicapped by the loss of sight. It Is hard in any land, but in China, where even among those in full possession of their senses, there are hundreds of thousands just on the verge of starvation, the touch needed to send a man over the brink is very, very slight indeed. Not even the close family ties of the Chinese can help them much, for where the strongest suffer, the weak must go to the wall. And there are very few crafts open to the blind man. He may be a story- teller, or a fortune-teller, or a musician, I cannot 132 A WOMAN IN CHINA imagine what he would do if his talents did not run in those lines, and even then he is dependent upon the doles of a people who have very, very little to give away, and naturally guard that little carefully. Once blind there is nothing more to be done. The beautiful blue sky of China, the golden sunshine have gone, and in its place there is the darkness, warm sometimes, bitter cold sometimes, the envelop- ing darkness that means for so many helplessness and starvation, often at the very best semi-starvation, borne with the uncomplaining stoicism of the Chinese. Now once upon a time a man stood upon the Beggars' Bridge in Peking, outside the walls of the Tartar City, selling Bibles, and noticed as everyone must do, the number of blind who passed by. Was there none to pity, asked the Rev. Hill Murray, none among all those who had devoted their lives to bringing the Gospel to the heathen to help? "What?" said some. "When you know that already the Chinese declare we missionaries take the children for the sake of making medicine of their eyes, will you give colour to the accusation by setting up a mission to the blind ? " And then, when he still persisted, " They need us, they need us," they said : " Since you are so keen, why don't you do it yourself?" To him it was " The Message." Why should he not do it himself? And there and then he set to work. It was years ago. What the cost, what the struggle, I do not know. I only know that one sunny April day wandering round Peking in a hu t'ung in the east of the Tartar City I came upon the house, or rather, for it is all done Chinese fashion, MISSION TO THE BLIND, PEKING. GIRLS AT MISSION TO THE BLIND. TWO CHARITIES 133 the nest of little houses with their courtyards and little gardens, that is the Mission to the Blind. The Rev. Hill Murray is gone to his rest, but his wife and daughters keep up the Mission, waiting for the time when his young son, away in England train- ing, shall be ready to take his place. Fifty pupils, boys and girls, the missionaries send in from the various stations, and here they are taught, taught to read and write according to the Braille system, taught to play musical instruments, and prepared for being preachers, which of course the mission- aries consider the most important avocation of all. I, in my turn, am only concerned that the unfor- tunate should be happy, or as happy as he can be under the circumstances, and I should think that the preacher, the man who feels himself of some impor- tance in spite of his affliction, competent to instruct his fellows in what, to him, is a matter of deep moment, has possibly the best chance of happiness. The girls are taught much the same as the boys, and in addition to knit, and such household work as they are capable of. It seemed to me sad, when I went there one bright sunny morning, that these young things should be for ever in the dark, but I am bound to say it was only my thoughts that were sad. The girls came laughing into the front courtyard with their knitting in their hands to see — see, save the mark! — 'the stranger, and have their photographs taken. The sun, the golden sun of April, streamed down on the stone-paved courtyard, all the plants in pots were in bloom, and the girls, dressed in Chinese fashion, made deep obeisance in the direction they were told I was. All around were the quaint roofs, dainty 134 A WOMAN IN CHINA lattice-work windows, and Eastern surroundings of a Chinese house, and the girls were grave at first, because they were being introduced to an older woman, and one whom they thought was their superior, therefore they thought it was not fitting they should laugh and talk, but when I remarked on their gravity, Miss Murray, shepherding them, laughed. " Oh they are very happy. They don't feel their lot, not yet at any rate. They are proud because they have learned so much. They can read and write, they can knit, and they have learned geography." Geography seemed a great asset, and presently, they, when they knew they might, were laughing and talking, and saying how proud they were to have their photographs taken. They sat there knitting, and even while they talked, did exactly what they were told, for like all Chinese, they have a great sense of the fitting. On one occasion a friend brought in a gramophone and set it going for their amusement. " I could have shaken them all," said Miss Murray, " they received the funniest sallies in solemn silence," and when the entertainer was gone, she reproached them, " You never even smiled." A dozen eager voices responded. " Oh but it was so hard not to laugh. We wanted to so much, but we thought it would not be right. It was so hard." The lot of all women in China is hard; doubly hard, it seemed to me, must the lot of these poor little girls be, cut off from the only hope of happiness a Chinese woman has, the chance of bearing a son. TWO CHARITIES 135 " And they can never marry," I said sorrowfully to Miss Murray. There came a smile into her bright young eyes. " Oh, I don't know. Some of them may. They are so very well-educated, and the Chinese admire education, and in a Chinese household, where there are so many people to do the work, a blind wife would not be so useless. Only the other day we heard of the marriage of one of our girls." And I looked at them again with other eyes, and hoped there were many households that would like a wife for their son who knew geography. We went from the outer to the inner courtyard, a rock garden where, in true Chinese fashion, are set out plants and rockeries, a little winding river with a stone bridge across it, a miniature lake — there is no water in it now — and many creeping plants hiding the stones. It is a charming spot, but naturally the blind are not allowed to go there by themselves. It is too dangerous. However, on one occasion, one curious little boy objected to these restrictions, and went on an exploring expedition on his own account. Groping about in the darkness, he fell into the river, which has steep cement sides, and out of that he could not get. You would think that he would have yelled lustily to call attention to his predicament, but that is not the Chinese way. He had disobeyed, Fate was against him, and he must suffer, and there he lay the livelong day without a murmur, and not till they called the roll in the evening, was his absence discovered, and a search for him instituted. Even that lesson was not sufficient, for once again he was missing, and once again he was discovered fallen into one of the many traps of the rock garden. 136 A WOMAN IN CHINA It was unexplored country to him, and he was willing to risk much to see what it was like. In the parts of the house with which they are familiar they can all run about, up and down steps, and in and out of courtyards and down passages as easily as people with sight. The boys came out of their class-rooms where they learn to read, and write, and sing, and play the harmonium, and raced about much as other boys in other lands would do. They have two meals a day — one in the morning and one at four o'clock in the afternoon, and as muc a tea and bread at other times as they care to have. Mrs Murray apologised for the dampness of the stones of the dining-room floor. It is a Chinese house, and stone floors are not a sign of poverty. These stones are damp because at twelve o'clock the boys come and pour themselves out cups of tea, and naturally they make a mess. The cook is busy, he cannot be with them always. For this charity is run on very simple lines, and the people who see are very few. There is the cook and the house- coolie, a woman for the girls, a doorkeeper, frail and old, he may be seen standing just outside the door in the picture of the hu t'ung, and a couple of men who attend to the making of the Braille books, for their making and binding requires the attention of someone with sight. But with these exceptions, the blind have it all to themselves ; they learn, and they play, and they eat by themselves. In one of the pictures I have taken, the boys have come out of school and are playing cat and mouse. All join hands in a circle, and one boy creeping in and out softly is chased by another. How they manage it in their darkness I don't know, but they TWO CHARITIES 187 chattered, and laughed, and shouted happily though what they said of course I did not know. They are all, boys and girls alike, dressed in the ordinary blue cotton of the country ; the boys had their hair cut short, for nowadays the queue, that most curious of fashions in the dressing of hair, is going out. The girls were also dressed like the peasants, with their trousers neatly drawn in at the ankles and their smooth, straight hair drawn back and plaited in a tail down the back, much like an English schoolgirl ; the little ones though, have their heads shaven in front, very ugly, but in conformation with Chinese custom, which always shaves part at least of the little one's head. In the courtyard where the boys were playing, was a rocking-horse, a dilapidated and battered toy without either tail, or mane, or eyes. And this toy is pathetic, when you know its history. It was bought with the pennies saved by Mr Hill Murray's children. They, too, out of their small store, wanted to do something for the blind ; and the blind children, immediately it came into their possession, took out its eyes. They were not going to have the rocking-horse spying on them when they could not see themselves. They all wisely live in native fashion. Their food is the food of the well-to-do lower classes, plenty of bread, steamed instead of being baked, and plenty of vegetables and soup, with just a little meat in it ; the food to which they have been accustomed, and which they like best. Their beds, I have tried to depict one, are just the ordinary k'ang, a stone plat- form to hold three in summer, and five in winter. Under it is a small fireplace where a fire can be built 138 A WOMAN IN CHINA to warm it, above, it is covered with matting, and each boy spreads his own bed of quilted cotton, which is rolled up in the daytime. I would have thought that the Mission to the Blind was so good and great a thing that it could rouse no bitter feelings in any breast. It has for its object the succouring of those whom the Chinese them- selves treat with great respect, yet so fanatical was the Boxer outbreak, that in the hu t'ung outside the Mission, forty of the pupils and their teachers, help- less in their affliction, were done to death by those who would have none of the Westerner and his works, even though those works were works of mercy. More often, perhaps, in China than anywhere in the world where I have been, am I reminded of the passage in Holy Writ that tells how as the Man of Pity came nigh unto Jericho a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging. And, hearing the multi- tude pass by, he asked what it meant, and they told him, " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." We may not give sight to the blind nowadays, but if we walk in the streets of Peking, and then turn in to the Mission to the Blind with its kindly care for the helpless, and its brightening of darkened lives, we know that that man who stood on the Beggars' Bridge pitied, as his Master had pitied before him. All that he could do he has done, and those who have come after him have followed faithfully in his footsteps, can any man do more ? I think not. Truly I think not. " What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee ? " asked the Lord of the World of the blind beggar. And he said, " Lord that I may receive my sight." Those who charge themselves with the care of the BLIND BOYS COMING OUT OF SCHOOL. BLIND BOYS PLAYING "CAT AND MOUSE.1 TWO CHARITIES 189 blind may not give so royally now. Theirs is the harder part, they tend and care with unfailing patience, untiring diligence, and then they stand, and wait. I was so lost in my admiration for the Mission to the Blind, that I began to think and to say, that missionary enterprise, which I had always thought should turn its attention to its own people, was at least justified in this land of China, where no pro- vision was made for the sick and afflicted, and where charity was unknown. I said it very often, and every foreigner approved, until at last, there came one or two who promptly showed me the utter folly of drawing deductions when I didn't know anything about the facts. The foreigner in China is divided into two camps. He is either missionary or he is anti-missionary. Both sides are keen on the matter. And, of course, there are always two sides to every question, as the little girl saw whose sympathies went out to the poor lion, who hadn't got a Christian. China needs medical missionaries, needs them as badly as the city slums of London or New York; and China is going to get them, for there are thousands of people who think a deal more of the state of the soul of the materialistic Chinaman than they do of the starving bodies, and more than starved intellects of the slum children of a Christian land. Formerly the missionary had a worse time than he has now. He came among a people who despised him, and more than once he suffered martyrdom, and even when there was no question of martyrdom, some of the regulations he submitted to must have been unpleasant. Unwisely I think, for you can 140 A WOMAN IN CHINA never make a European look like a Chinaman, the powers that ran the missionary societies, decided that the missionary must wear Chinese dress, even to the shaven head and the queue behind. A hatchet-faced Scot with a fiery red pigtail, they say was an awesome sight, certainly calculated to impress the Celestial, though whether in the way the new- comer intended I should not like to say. The growing of a proper queue was, of course, a question of months, and the majority of missionaries began their career with a false one. A story is told of one luckless young man in Shanghai who lost his, and went about his business for some little time unaware of the fact. When he did discover his loss he went back on his tracks, searching for it at all the places he had visited. At last he arrived at the Hong- Kong and Shanghai Bank, and there, pinned high on the wall, was his missing property, and attached to it by some facetious clerk was the legend in great letters that all might read : " Deposits of one tael not accepted here ! " For the benefit of the uninitiated, one tael is a sum of money, varying with the price of silver, from half-a-crown to three shillings. But those days are gone by. Nowadays mission- ary societies are wiser, and the medical missionaries are pleasant, cheerful, hard-working men and women doing an immense amount of good among the suffer- ing poor, so kindly, so thoughtful are they that I grudge their services to the heathen when I think how many of the children, aye and those who are not children, in the mean streets of the great cities of the West need their services. They trouble themselves about the souls of the people too, and the example of kindly lives must be good. Again I grudge it all to TWO CHARITIES 141 the Oriental, though I have come to realise that there are many ways of doing good in the world. I do occasionally feel that the missionaries are a little too strenuous in inculcating prayer and praise, and exhorting to a virtue that is a little beyond the average mortal. The caring for both bodies and souls can certainly be overdone. However I dare say it all works right in the end, and I, who do nothing, should be the last to judge. Still sometimes I could not but remember the picture of the two babies discussing the situation, the fat, plump baby, and the thin, miserable, scrawny one. Said the thin baby : " How do you manage to keep so fat? My milk's sterilised, and the milkman's sterilised, and even the cart's sterilised, and yet look at me," and he stretched out his thin, starved hands. " Ah, so's mine," said the fat baby serenely, " but, when no one's looking, I climb down and get a chew at the corner of the floor-rug, and get enough bacteria to keep a decent life in me ! " Listening to the talk of the missionaries, hearing of the foolishness of smoking, the wickedness of alcoholic drinks, and various forms of sinfulness, I have rather hoped, and more than suspected, that the converts sometimes got down and had a chew at the corner of the floor-rug when no one was looking. Not that many of the missionaries don't endeavour to live up to their own moral code, many of them do, and many of them lead lives of abnegation and self- denial. We all know that the missionary of the Church of Rome gives up everything, and expects never again to see his country once he enters the mission-field, and many of the China Inland Mission- 142 A WOMAN IN CHINA aries, except in the matter of celibacy, run them close. Their pay is very, very small, no holidays can be counted upon, and their lives are isolated and lonely. Even the American missionary, who is far better paid, gives up his own individuality. The ministers earn more, I believe, than they would in their own country, because people give gladly to missions, while at home the minister's salary is often a burning question. " Far fields are ever fair," but a clever surgeon who is kept hard at it from dawn to dark, once the Chinese appreciate him, certainly receives far less than he could earn working for himself. He is given a comfortable home, he may marry and have children without a qualm, for, for every child twenty pounds a year is allowed till he is of age ; the societies see to it that a six weeks' holiday is given every year, and a year's furlough every seven years with passage paid home for wife and children. No business firm could afford to make more comfortable provision for its employees. In China, service is cheap and good, the food and the cooks both excellent, and the climate, at least in the north, exhilarating and delightful. But the missionaries do their duty, and do it well, and they are pioneers of Western civilisation. In their wake comes trade, though that is the last thing the majority of them think about. The only trouble for the American missionary seems to me the danger that hangs over every dweller in China — a danger they share with every other foreign resident. It is hard to think of danger when one looks at the courteous, subservient Chinese, but Sir Robert Hart put it succinctly : " Anything may happen at any time in China." And for all the New Republic, TWO CHARITIES 148 and for all the fair promise, his words are still worthy of attention. " Do you really think," said R. F. Johnston, the well-known writer on things Chinese, " that the Chinese knew nothing about charity till it was preached to them by Christian missionaries ? " I intimated that such had been my faith. " The Chinese," said he, a little indignantly, " are one of the most charitable peoples on earth." And then he told me what I, a stranger and ignorant of the language, might have gone years without learning. To begin with, family ties are far stronger in China than in European countries, and a man feels himself bound to help his helpless relatives in a way that would seem absurd to the average Christian, and in addition there are numerous societies for helping those, who, by some mischance, have no one upon whom they can depend. There are societies for succouring the sick, societies for looking after orphans, and other kindly institutions. There are even societies for paying poor folks' fares across ferries! There certainly are a good many rivers in China, but this society I must admit strikes me as a work of supererogation. I don't think much merit can really attach to the subscribers, for the majority of poor folks I have seen would be so much better for walking through the river, clothes and all. However, we have a good few foolish charities of our own, and even if the Chinese charities do not cover all the ground, we must remember that China is, in so many things, archaic; and these charities run on archaic lines are naturally shocking to men steeped in the sanitary lore of the West, 144 A WOMAN IN CHINA We have only to read the novels of Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte to see a few flaws in the way the chanties of the Early Victorian era were administered ; what would we think if we could take a peep into thetlazar-house of the Middle Ages — yet there were kind hearts, I doubt not, in the Middle Ages — and China, with her overflowing population, is yet in the matter of charity where we were some time about the reign of the seventh Henry. Could we expect much ? " Would you like to see a Buddhist Orphanage ? " asked Mr Johnston. I said I would, and he promised to take me to one they were trying to run on Western lines. It was a pleasantly warm Sunday, with a wind blowing that lifted the filthy dust of Peking from the roadways, and flung it in our faces. We inter- viewed first two rickshaw coolies with a view to ascertaining whether they knew where we wanted to go, or rather he interviewed them, for I have no Chinese. They swore they did, by all their gods. Still he looked doubtful. "Why don't you take them?" said I, feeling mistakenly that nowhere else in the town could the dust and the wind be quite so bad as just outside the Wagons Lits Hotel. " Because I want to find out if they really know where we want to go. They always swear they do, for fear of losing the job." However, at last we set out with rickshaw coolies who seemed to have a working knowledge of the route we wished to follow, and we went through the Chien Men into the Chinese City, and away to the west through a maze of narrow alley-ways, hung TWO CHARITIES 145 with long Chinese signs, past the closely packed, one-storied shops where they sold china and earthen- ware, cotton goods and food-stuffs, lanterns, and rows of uninteresting Chinese shoes. The streets of course were thronged. There were rickshaws, laden donkeys, broughams with Venetian shutters to shut out the glare, the clanging bell and outrider to tell that some important man was passing, mules, camels, men on foot with or without burdens, with bamboos across their shoulders and loads slung from them, and some few women tottering along on maimed feet. And every man was giving his opinion on things in general to the universe at the top of his voice. " How I wish I could understand what they were saying," I said to my companion once, when the exigencies of the way brought our rickshaws side by side. He laughed. " Sometimes it's as well you shouldn't." And then he corrected himself lest I should have got a wrong impression. " No, on the whole they are very polite to each other." Once we came upon a man with a packet of papers in his hand. He was standing upon some- thing to raise him a little above the passing crowd, and distributing the papers not to everyone, but apparently with great discrimination. Both of us were deemed worthy of a sheet, and I wondered what on earth the hieroglyphics could mean. It was an invitation to a funeral, my cicerone informed me, the next time we were in speaking distance. Some woman, who had been working for a broader education for women, had died, and her friends were going to mark their appreciation of her labours by K 146 A WOMAN IN CHINA a suitable funeral. So is the change coming to China. As we went on the houses grew fewer, there were open spaces where kaoliang and millet were being reaped, for this, my second charity, I visited in September, the grey walls of the city rose up before us, and still there was no sign of the monastery. Our men were panting, the sweat was running down their faces and staining their thin coats, still they dragged us on, never dreaming of using the tongues Nature had given them to lighten their labours. To ask the way would have been to show the foreigner in the rickshaw that they had not known it in the first instance, and that would be to lose face. But one of the foreigners had grasped that already, and he insisted on the necessary inquiries being made, and presently we had gone back on our tracks and were at the monastery, being received by the abbot who had charge of it, and a tall Chinese, who spoke German, and was deeply inter- ested in the Orphanage. It was the great day of the year, for they were having their annual sports. Over the entrance gateway was a magnificent decoration to mark the event. The place was built Chinese fashion, with many courtyards and low-roofed houses round them, and we were led from one courtyard to another until at last we arrived at a large courtyard, or rather playground. Here were the monks and their charges, and a certain number of spectators who had been invited to see the show, all men, for men and women do not mingle in China, and the next day the entertainment would be repeated with women only as spectators. I received a warm Q u If TWO CHARITIES 147 invitation to come again, but I felt that once would be enough. We sat down on a bench with a table in front of us, a boy was told off to keep us supplied with tea, and I had leisure to look around me and see what manner of people were these among whom I had come. There are thirty monks here, and they have charge of two hundred and fifty orphans whom they teach to read and write, and all the useful trades, give them, in fac^ a good start in the world, and the best of chances to earn their own living. The bright sunshine was everywhere, the walls in a measure shut out the wind and the dust, and the sports were in full swing. At the upper end of the ground, in a room overlooking the play, sat the abbot and some of his subordinates. They wore loose gowns of some dark material girt in at the waist, their only ornament, if ornament it could be called, was a rosary, and head and face were abso- lutely bare of hair. The abbot from a neighbouring monastery was introduced to me too, a man with a pleasant, thoughtful, cultured face and the most beautiful milk-white teeth. I was sorry I could not speak to that man. I felt somehow as if we might have met on a plane where nationalities and race count for little ; but that would have been due to his culture and broadmindedness, not to mine. Then there were the orphans. They were fat, well-fed looking little chaps dressed in unbleached calico trousers, and coats of the very brightest blue I have ever seen. Each wore on his breast, as a mark of the festive occasion, a bright pink carnation, and every head was shaven as bare as a billiard ball. They looked happy and well, but to my Western 148 A WOMAN IN CHINA eyes that last sanitary precaution, as I suppose it was, spoiled any claim they had to good looks. They ran races, they jumped about in sacks, they picked up hoops, they stood in clusters of six and sang in shrill young voices, weird and haunting songs that I was told were patriotic and full of hope for China. The three first in the races had their names proclaimed in black characters on white flags that were carried round the grounds, and there and then received their prizes, a handkerchief or some such trifle. It was interesting not so much for the sports themselves, those may be better seen in any well- regulated boys' school, but because this is the first time such efforts have been made in China, and made by the Chinese themselves. That a man should take any violent exercise, unless he were absolutely obliged, that he should have any ideal beyond looking fat, and sleek, and well-fed, is entirely contrary to all received Chinese ideas, and must mark a great step in their advancement. And then they brought me the youngest orphan, a wee, fat boy of eight, and though he looked well, he seemed much younger. Probably he was. As I understand it, the Chinese counts himself a year old in the year he is born, and the first New Year's day adds another year to his life, so that the child born on the last day of the old year, would on New Year's Day, be two years old! There is something very lovable about a small child, and there was about this little smiling chap, though he was unbe- comingly dressed in coat and trousers of unbleached calico, and his head was shaven bare. He held out his hand to me when he was told, bowed low when TWO CHARITIES 149 I gave him a little piece, a very little piece, of money, and then trotted across the grounds to where a young monk was looking on at the show. He caught hold of the monk's robe, and nestled against him, and the man put down a tender hand and caressed him. No child of his own, by his vows, would he ever have, but he was a tender father to this little lonely waif. A waif? He was well-fed, he was suitably clad, and here I saw with my own eyes he had tenderness, could any child have had more? Could men do more? And again I say, as I said when I looked at the Mission to the Blind, I think not. Very surely I think not. At least one of these monks was giving what no Westerner could possibly give to a child of an alien race, that tenderness that softens and smooths life. "They brought young children to Him, that He should touch them . . . and He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them." These monks profess a faith that was old when Christianity was born, but they are carrying out as faithfully as ever did any follower of Christ His behests. What matter the creed? What matter by what name we call it? Away in this old Eastern city here, they are preaching, in deeds, the gospel of love and kindness, and no man can do more. We are apt to think that charity and pity are attributes of the Christian faith only but that is to insult the many good and holy men of other faiths. I am not scorning the kindness and self-sacrifice of the Christian missionary, but it is better, where it is possible, that charity and pity for the Chinese should come from those of their own race. For, however tender and kind an alien may be, he still 150 A WOMAN IN CHINA stands outside, and the recipient to a certain extent is necessarily alone. Therefore am I doubly grate- ful to Mr Johnston for taking me to this Orphanage, where I could see how good the Chinese could be to the waifs and strays of their own people. Pity and mercy belong not to the Western nations alone. They come from the Most High, and are common to all His people, Christian missionary selling Bibles, and pitying the blind upon the Beggars' Bridge, or Buddhist monk taking to his heart the little forsaken child in the monastery of an older faith in the Chinese City. For such love as that we find in the world we, who look on, can only bow our heads and give thanks. CHAPTER IX A CHINESE INN The start for Jehol— Tuatk — A Peking cart— Chinese roads — A great highway — Chances of camping out — " Room for ten thousand merchant guests "—Human occupancy — Dust of ages — Eyes at the window — Catering for the journey — The Chinese chicken, minced. THERE were two places that I particularly wanted to go to when I could make up my mind to tear myself away from the charms of Peking. One was the Tungling, or Eastern Tombs, the tombs where the great Empress-Dowager and most of the Manchu Emperors were buried, and Jehol, the Hunting Palace of the Manchus, away to the north in Inner Mongolia, or on the outermost edge of the Province of Chihli, for boundaries are vague things in that out-of-the-way part of the world. I won- dered if I could combine them both, if instead of coming back to Peking after visiting the tombs I might make my way over the mountains to Jehol. With that end in view I instituted inquiries, only to find that while many people knew a man, or had heard of several men who had been, I never struck the knowledgeable man himself. The only thing was to start out on my own account, and I knew then I should soon arrive at the difficulties to be overcome, not the least of them was two hundred 152 A WOMAN IN CHINA and eighty miles in a Peking cart. The only draw- back to that arrangement was that if I didn't like the difficulties when I did meet them, there could be no drawing back. They would have to be faced. Accordingly I engaged a servant with a rudi- mentary knowledge of English. When the matter we spoke of was of no importance, such as my dinner, I could generally understand him, when it was of importance, such as the difficulties of the way, I could not, but I guessed, or the events them- selves as they unfolded became explanatory. This gentleman was a small person with noble views on the subject of squeeze, as it pertained to Missie's servant, and he wore on state occasions a long black coat of brocaded silk, slit at the sides, and on all occasions the short hairs that fringed the shaven front of his head stood up like a black horsehair halo. He was badly pock-marked, very cheerful, and an excellent servant, engineering me over diffi- culties so well that I had to forgive him the squeeze, though in small matters I was occasionally made aware I was paying not double the price, but seven times what it ought to have been. However one buys one's experience. He was my first servant and I paid him thirty dollars a month, so I was squeezed on that basis. A six months' stay in China convinced me I could get as good a servant for fifteen dollars a month, and feel he was well paid. His name was Tuan, pronounced as if it began with a " D," and he engaged for me two Peking carts with a driver each, and two mules apiece. One was for myself and some of my luggage, the other took A CHINESE INN 158 my servant, my humble kitchen utensils, and the rest of my baggage; and one Sunday morning in May, it is hardly necessary to say it was sunny, because a dull morning in May in Northern China is an exception hailed with joy, the carts appeared at the door of the " Wagons Lits," and we were ready to start. At least everything was ready but me. I ached in every limb, and felt sure that I was just beginning an attack of influenza. What was to be done? I longed with a great longing for my peaceful bed. I did not want to go venturing forth into the, to me, unknown wilds of China, but I had engaged those carts at the rate of seven dollars a day for the two, and I felt that I really could not afford to linger. Possibly the fresh air might do me good. At any rate, I reflected thankfully, as I climbed into the foremost cart, no active exertion was required of me. And that only shows how remarkably little I knew about a Peking cart. A man and a girl of my acquaintance rose up early in the morning to accompany me the first ten miles on donkeys, we had tiffin together beneath the shade of some pine-trees in a graveyard, and then they wished me good-bye, and I started off with the comfortable feeling that arises from the parting good wishes of kind friends. Now a Peking cart is a very venerable mode of progression. When our ancestors were lightly- dressed in woad, and had no conception of any wheeled vehicle, the Chinese lady was paying her calls sitting in the back of a Peking cart, the seat of honour under the tilt, well out of the sight of the passers-by, while her servant sat in front, the place of comfort, if such a word can be applied to anything 154 A WOMAN IN CHINA pertaining to a Peking cart, for in spite of its long and aristocratic record if there is any mode of pro- gression more wearying and uncomfortable I have not met it. It is simply a springless board set on a couple of wheels with a wagon tilt of blue cotton, if you are not imperial, over it, and a place for heavy luggage behind. The Chinaman sits on the floor and does not seem to mind, but the ordinary Westerner, such as I am, packs his bedding and all the cushions he can raise around him, and then resigns himself to his fate. It has one advantage people will tell you, it has nothing to break in it, but there are moments when it would be a mighty relief if something did break, for if the woodwork holds together, as it tosses you from side to side, you yourself are one sore, bruised mass. No, I cannot recommend a Peking cart, even on the smoothest road. And the roads in China are not smooth. We all know the description of the snakes in Ireland, " There are no snakes," and if in the same manner could be described the roads in China, blessed would the roads in China be, but as China is a densely populated country there are so-called roads, upon which the people move about, but I have seldom met one that was any better than the sur- rounding country, and very, very often on this journey did I meet roads where it was ease and luxury to move off them on to the neighbouring ploughed field. The receipt for a road there in the north seems to be : Take a piece of the country that is really too bad to plough or to use for any agricul- tural purposes whatever, that a mountain torrent, in fact, has given up as too much for the water, 1 1 LEAVING THE WAGONS LITS FOR THE MOUNTAINS. A STREET STALL. A CHINESE INN 155 upset a stone wall over it, a stone wall with good large stones in it, take care they never for a moment lie evenly, and you have your road. Leaving Peking for the Eastern Tombs you go for the first two or three hours along a paved way of magnificent proportions, planned and laid out as a great highway should be. The great stones with which it is paved were probably put there by slave labour, how many hundred years ago I do not know, but the blocks are uneven now, some of them are gone altogether, though how a huge block of stone could possibly disappear passes my understanding, and whenever the carter could, he took tHe cart down beside the road, where at least the dust made a cushion for the nail-studded wheels, and the jarring and the jolting were not quite so terrible. It takes as long to get beyond the environs of Peking in a cart as it does to get out of London in a motor-car. First we passed through the Baby- lonish gate, and the great walls were behind us, then, outside the city, all looking dusty, dirty, and khaki-coloured in the brilliant sunshine, were numerous small houses, and the wayside was lined with booths on which were things for sale, green vegetables and salads looking inviting, if I could have forgotten the danger of enteric, unappetising- looking meat, bones, the backbones of sheep from which all flesh had been taken, eggs, piles of cakes and small pies, shoes, clothes, samovars, everything a poor man in a primitive community can possibly require, and along the roadway came an endless array of people, clad for the most part in blue cotton, men walking, men with loads slung from a 156 A WOMAN IN CHINA bamboo across their shoulders, donkeys laden with baskets, with sacks of grain, with fat Chinese on their backs, with small-footed women being trans- ported from one place to another; there were Peking carts, there were mules, there were ponies ; and this busy throng is almost the same as it was a couple of thousand years ago. I wondered ; could I have taken a peep at the outskirts of London in the days of Elizabeth of happy memory, would it not have been like this? But no. The sky here is bright and clear, the sunshine hot, and the faces of the moving crowd are yellow and oriental. This crowd is like the men who toiled round the quarries of Babylon or Nineveh, and it is perhaps more satisfied with itself and its position in the universe than any like company of people anywhere in the world. That impression was forced upon me as I sfayed in Peking, it grew and grew as I got farther away from the great city, and out into the country. But it was a long, long while before I could feel I was really in the country. There was the khaki- coloured land, there were the khaki-coloured houses built of mu3 apparently, with graceful, tiled roofs, and blue-clad people everywhere, and everywhere at work. Always the fields were most beautifully tilled, there were no fences, the Chinese is too civilised to need a fence, and when you see stone walls it is only because, since they can't be dropped off the planet into space, the stones must be dis- posed of somehow, here and there the kaoliang was coming up like young wheat, in vivid green patches that were a relief from the general dust, and occa- sionally there were trees, willow or poplar or fir, delightful to look upon, that marked a graveyard, A CHINESE INN 157 and then, just as I was beginning to hope I was out in the country, a walled town would loom up. And in the dusk of the evening we stopped and met for the first time the discomforts of a Chinese inn. We had started rather late, and I had spent so much time bidding farewell to my friends, that we did not reach the town we had intended to, but put up at a smalt inn in a small hamlet. This, my first inn was, like most Chinese inns, a line of one-storied buildings, built round the four sides of a large courtyard. Mixed up with the rooms were the stalls for the beasts, the mules and the little grey donkeys, with an occasional pony or two, and the courtyard was dotted with stone or wooden mangers. In the pleasant May weather there was no need to put all the beasts under cover, and there were so many travellers there was not room in the stalls for all the beasts. It was all wonderfully Eastern. I remembered, I could not but remember, how once there arrived at such an inn a little company, weary and tired, and " so it was, that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger: because there was no room for them in the inn." I thought of that little company as the Peking cart jolted over the step that is on the threshold of all Chinese doors — no one considers comfort in China, what is a jolt more or less, a Peking cart will not break — and I found myself in the courtyard^, and a trestle was brought for me to get down from 158 A WOMAN IN CHINA the cart. I might have jumped, I suppose, but one hundred li, about thirty miles, had left me stiff and aching in every limb. My head ached too with the influenza, and when I inspected the room offered for my accommodation, I only wished drearily that there had been no room in this par- ticular inn, and that I might have slept out in the open. But that first day as I went across the plain, that while there were no hills upon it rose slowly towards the hills, I realised that in China, there is not the charm of the open road, you may not sleep under the sky, you must put up at an inn, you would as soon think of camping out in one of the suburbs of London. Indeed you might easily find more suitable places for camping about Surbiton or Richmond than you would among the sterile hills or cultivated valley bottoms of Northern China. I hoped against hope for three days. I had a com- fortable sleeping-bag and the nights were fine, it seemed it would be so simple a thing to camp a little off the roadside, even though I had no tent, and that first night, when I smelled the smell of the rooms, rank and abominable, and reeking of human occu- pancy, I envied my mules, and said that as I got farther into the country I could certainly sleep outside. " Room for ten thousand merchant guests," said the innkeeper in characters of black on red paper over his door, and unless those merchants were very small indeed, I am sure I don't know where he proposed to put them. I remembered with a shudder, that one man of my acquaintance had said : "What I cannot stand is the perpetual tramp, A CHINESE INN 159 tramp, all night," and I had my suspicions that the guests were small on this occasion, and I feared lest they were going to be catered for. There were also notices in the effective red and black that the landlord would not be responsible for any valuables not confided to his care, and exhorting the guests to be careful of fire. And it seemed to me, as I looked at the rotting thatch and the dubious grey walls, that a fire in this inn would be the very best thing that could happen to it. You see I was specially particular this first night. I thought the next inn might be better. I had a good deal to learn. " The tiger from the Eastern Hills and the tiger from the Western Hills," says the Chinese proverb, " are both the same." So everywhere a Chinese inn is about as bad as it can be. They are mostly used by carters, and well-to-do people always go to temples, when they are available. There wasn't a temple about here, and I didn't know I could have lodged there had there been one, so I resigned myself to the inevitable, and wondered with all the energy that was left in me what adverse fate had set me down here. I might have gone back, of course. In a way I was my own mistress ; but after all, we none of us own ourselves in this world. I had a book to write, and material for that book was not to be got by staying comfortably in the Wagons Lits Hotel, and therefore I very reluct- antly peeped into a room from which clouds of dust were issuing, and which smelt worse than any place I had ever before thought of using as a bed-chamber and dining-room combined. The dust was because I had impressed upon the valued Tuan that I must have a clean room, so he had importantly turned 160 A WOMAN IN CHINA two coolies on to stir up the dust of ages, a thousand years at least, I should say, there seemed no end to it, and I wondered, in addition to the merchant guests, what awful microbes were being wakened out of their long sleep. Left alone, they might have been buried so deep that they might not have come high me ; but he was giving them all a chance. After all it was only fair, a foreign woman did not visit a Chinese inn every day of the week. After more dust than I had ever seen before all at once, had come out of that room, I instructed water to be brought and poured on things in general, and, when the turmoil had quieted down a little, I went in and inspected my quarters. They all bear a strong family resemblance to one another, the rooms of these Chinese inns. I always tried to get one that opened directly on to the court- yard, as giving more chance of air. The Chinese, as a rule, have not much use for fresh air. Tuan, had he had his way, would have shut the door fast, as being more correct and private, and then I should have been in an hermetically sealed room, lighted all along the courtyard side by a most dainty lattice- work window covered with white tissue paper, or rather tissue paper that had once been white. It had been well-smoked during the winter, and a considerable quantity of the dust that had been so industriously stirred up, had lodged there. But air I must have, so I had the paper stripped off from the top of the window as far down as my desire for privacy would allow. Below, the more daring spirits, who had assembled to see the foreign woman, wetted their fingers and poked them softly through the bottom part of the window; and then A CHINESE INN 161 an eye appeared, so that it really seemed at first as if I might as well have been comfortable and had all the paper off. I went outside, and let it plainly be seen that I was very angry indeed, and then Tuan, who had a great idea of my dignity, or rather of his dignity, which was as nothing if I was of no consequence, put one of the " cartee men " on guard, and once more I retired to my uncomfortable lodging. It had a stone floor, being quite a superior sort of inn, the poorer sort have only beaten earth, there were two wooden chairs of dark wood, high, with narrow and uncomfortable seats, a table, also uncomfortably high, and of course, the k'ang. Most people know all about the k'ang now, but this was my first introduction to it as a working piece of furniture. It is a platform of stone about two feet high, so constructed that a small fire lighted under- neath, and a very small fire it is, carries the warmth, by a system of flues, all over it. It is covered generally with matting, and on it is always a k'ang table, a little table about eighteen inches square and a foot higfT, and, though this is not intentional, covered with the grease of many meals. I looked doubtfully at the k'ang this first day. It seemed to me I could not lodge in such a place, and I wished heartily that I had left the describing of China to some more hardened traveller. There was a grass mat upon it, hiding its stoniness, and I had powdered borax sprinkled over it, about half a tin of Keating's followed, though I am told the insects in China rather like Keating's, and only then did I venture to have my bed set up. Alongside was placed my india-rubber bath, the gift of a friend, and every night of that journey did I thank her with L 162 A WOMAN IN CHINA all my heart, it was so much nicer than my old canvas bath, and making sure that the " cartee man " was still on guard I proceeded to wash and undress and creep into my sleeping-bag. At only one Chinese inn where I stayed could food for the traveller be had, and that was, I think, only because it combined the functions of inn- keeping and restaurant. In any case, of course, the foreign traveller would not think of eating Chinese food, and I, like everyone else, provided my own. I brought with me rice, tea, and flour. Tuan cooked for me on an absurd little charcoal stove upon which I might have succeeded in boiling an egg. With the exception of those few stores, I lived off the country, buying chickens and eggs, onions, and hard little pears ; Tuan doing the buying, charging me at a rate that made me wonder how on earth the " Wagons Lits " managed to board and lodge its guests at £i a day. I used to think that, for sheer toughness, the palm might be given to the West African chicken, but I withdraw that statement, he isn't in it alongside the Chinese. We used to buy small birds about the size of a pigeon, But an elderly ostrich couldn't have been tougher. My teeth, thank Heaven, are excellent, but the Chinese chicken was too much for them. I then saw why Tuan had provided a chopper for kitchen use, he called it " cookee knife," and the fiat went forth — I would have no more chicken unless it was minced. But that first night I couldn't look at chicken, I couldn't even laugh at the woodeny pears and rice which were the next course. I declined everything, lay in bed and drank tea, the wind came in through INN YARD, PEKING CART IN FOREGROUND. GOSSIPING. A CHINESE INN 163 the open lattice-work, guttered my candle and then blew it out, and I, first hot, and then cold, and always miserable, stared at the luminous night sky, cut into squares by the lattice-work of the window, was conscious of every bone in my body, and wondered if I were not going to be very ill indeed. CHAPTER X THE TUNGLING A Peking cart as a cure for influenza — Difficulties of a narrow road — The dead have right of way — The unlucky women — Foot binding — ** Beat you, beat you " — Lost luggage — " You must send your husband " — Letter- writing under difficulties — A masterless woman — Malanyu — Most perfect place of tombs in the world. BUT I wasn't. As a rule I find I worry myself unnecessarily in life. Either a thing can be altered, or it can't. If it can't there's an end to the matter, worrying doesn't mend it. I had come here of my own free will — it wasn't nice, but there was nothing to do but make the best of it. In the morning if I wasn't very happy I was no worse, and to go back that weary journey to Peking would only be to make myself ridiculous. Therefore I arose with the sun, and a nice, bright cheerful sun he was, looked at my breakfast, drank the tea and was ready to start. All the hamlet watched me climb into my cartA I felt I couldn't have walked a step to save my life, and we rumbled over that steep step, and were out in the roadway again. It is not the best way to view a country from a Peking cart, for the tossing from side to side is apt to engender a distaste for life and to encourage a feeling that nothing would really matter if only the cart would come to a standstill for a moment. Add to that the aching head of influenza and that morn- 164 THE TUNGLING 165 ing I began to pity not only myself but my publisher, for I began to fear he was going to lose money on me. It was Byron, I think, who considered that Providence or somebody else who shall be nameless always took care of publishers, and that is the reason perhaps why I have come to the opinion that a trip in a Peking cart is really the best cure for influenza. Had I gone to bed and had someone kind and nice to wait upon me and bring me the milk and soda and offer the sympathy my soul desired, I should probably have taken a fortnight to get well; as it was, out in the open air from dawn to dark, three days saw the end of my woes, and even at the worst I was able to sit up and take a certain amount of interest in passing events. Gradually, gradually, as we went on we seemed to forget the great city that absorbed all things, and the surroundings became more truly countrified. The road, when it was not stones, was deep sand with deep, deep ruts worn by the passing of many carts, and it stretched over just as great a portion of the country as the people would allow. Flat it was, flat, and all along the way were little villages and hamlets. There was no temptation to walk, for it was very rough indeed, just the worn road and the edge of the tilled fields, tilled as surely never before in the world were fields tilled, and they stretched away to the far distant blue hills. Occasionally the road sank deep between them, and as it was very narrow the traffic question was sometimes trouble- some. On this day we met a country cart, a longer cart than the Peking cart, covered in with matting and drawn by a mule and a couple of donkeys. Manifestly there was not room for the carts to pass 166 A WOMAN IN CHINA and I wondered what would happen for, for either of us, laden as we were, to go backwards would have been difficult. I was requested to get out, which I did reluctantly, my carts were drawn so close against the bank that the right wheels were raised against it, and then they tried to get the other cart past. No good, it would not go. About a dozen men all in dirty, very dirty blue, with pointed hats of grass matting, looking as if they had stepped off old- fashioned tea caddies, came and took an intelligent interest, even as they might have done in Stafford- shire, but that didn't make the carts any smaller, and then they decided to drive the country cart up the bank into the field above. They tried and tried, they lashed that unfortunate mule and the donkeys, but with all their pulling it was too heavy, up the bank it would not go. Chinese patience was exem- plified. But it was the mule and the donkeys that really displayed the patience. I climbed the bank, sat on a stone and watched them, and did not like to give my valuable advice, because these men must have been driving carts along these roads all their lives, and presumably must know something about it, while never in my life had I handled a team con- sisting of two donkeys and a mule. At last when they got an extra hard lashing and fell back, con- quered once more, poor brutes, by the weight, I rose up and interfered. I did not request — I ordered. They were to take the two foremost mules from my carts and hitch them on to the other cart. My foremost mule protested, he evidently said he had never been associated with donkeys before ; but in two minutes they had got that cart to the higher level, and we were free to go on our way, Why THE TUNGLING 167 they did not do it without my ordering I am sure I do not know, for as a rule I had no authority over the carts, they went their own way — I was merely a passenger. Once more that day the narrow way was blocked, this time by a funeral. The huge coffin was borne by ten straining men, and there was no parleying with it, the dead have right of way in China, and out of the way we had to get. We backed with diffi- culty till the bank on one side was a little lower, and then up we went till we were on the cultivated land, drove on till we were ahead of the corpse, and then down again into the roadway once more. In China, as far as I have been, you never get away from the people, this country was far more thickly populated than the country round London, for I have walked in Surrey lanes and found no one of whom to ask a question, while here there were always people in sight. True, here were no leafy lanes such as we find in Surrey and Kent, but the whole country lay flat and outstretched till it seemed as if nothing were hidden right up to the base of the far away hills. The days were getting hot and the men were working in the fields stripped to the waist, while most of the little boys were stark naked, pretty little lissom things they were, too, if they had only been washed ; and the little girls, for all clothing, wore a square blue pocket-handkerchief put on corner-wise in front, slung round the neck and tied round the waist with a bit of string ; but farther on, in the mountain villages, I have seen the little girls like the little boys, stark naked. Only the women are clothed to the neck, whatever the state of the thermometer. Always there were houses by the 168 A WOMAN IN CHINA wayside, and many villages and hamlets, and the women sat on the doorsteps sewing, generally it seemed to me at the sole of a shoe, or two of them laboured at the little stone corn mills, that were in every village, grinding the corn, the millet, or the maize, for household use. Sometimes a donkey, and a donkey can be bought for a very small sum, turned the stone, but usually it seemed that it was the women of the household who, on their tiny feet, painfully hobbled round, turning the heavy stone and smoothing out the flour with their hands, so that it might be smoothly and evenly ground. Poor women! They have a saying in China to the effect that a woman eats bitterness, and she surely does, if the little I have seen of her life is any criterion. As I went through the villages, in the morning and evening, I could hear the crying of children. Chinese children are proverbially naughty, no one ever checks them, and I could not know why these children were crying, some prob- ably from the pure contrariness of human nature, but a missionary woman, and a man who scorned missionaries and all their works both told me that, morning and evening, the little girls cried because the bandages on their feet were being drawn more tightly. Always it is a gnawing pain, and the only relief the little girl can get is by pressing the calf of her leg tightly against the edge of the k'ang. The pressure stops the flow of blood and numbs the feet as long as it is kept up, but it cannot be kept up long, and with the rush of blood comes the increase of pain — a pain that the tightening of the bandages deepens. " Beat you, beat you," cries the mother taking a THE TUNGLING 169 stick to the little suffering thing, " you cry when I bind your feet." For a Chinese woman must show no emotion, above all she must never complain. This, of course, is a characteristic of the nation. The men will bear much without complaining. I never grew accustomed to it. The pity and the horror of it never failed to strike me, and if the missionaries do but one good work, they do it in prevailing on the women to unbind their feet, in preventing unlucky little girls from going through years of agony. There is no mistaking the gait of a woman with bound feet. She walks as if her legs were made of wood, unbending from the hip downwards to tne heels. The feet are tiny, shaped like small hoofs about four inches long, encased in embroidered slippers, and to walk at all she must hold out her arms to balance herself. When I was laughed at for my "pathetic note," and was told I exaggerated the sufferings of the women, I took the trouble to inquire of four doctors, three men and one woman, people who came daily in contact with these women, and they were all of one opinion, the sufferings of the women were very great. The binding in girl- hood was not only terribly painful but even after the process was finished the feet were often diseased, often sore and ulcerated, and at the very best the least exertion, as is only natural, makes them ache. " Try," said one doctor, " walking with your toes crushed under your sole, the arch of your foot pressed up till the whole foot is barely four inches long, and you can only walk on your heel, and see if you do not suffer — suffer in all parts of your body. They say," he went on, " that while there are many 170 A WOMAN IN CHINA peaceful, kindly old men among the Chinese, every woman is a shrew. And I can well believe it. What else could you expect? Oh women have a mighty thin time in China. I don't believe there is any place in the world where they have a worse." If anyone doubts that this custom presses heavily on the women, let him ask any doctor who has practised much among the Chinese how many legs he has taken off because the neglected sores of ulcerated, bound feet have become gangrenous and a danger to life. " It really doesn't matter," said another doctor I knew well, " a Chinese woman is just as well with a pair of wooden legs as with the stumps the binding has left her!" As a rule I did not see the beginnings, for though the women go about a little, the small girls are kept at home. But once on this journey, at a poor little inn in the mountains, among the crowd gathered to see the foreign woman were two little girls about eight or nine, evidently the innkeeper's daughters. They were well-dressed among a ragged crew. Their smocks were of bright blue cotton, their neat little red cotton trousers were drawn in at their ankles, and their feet, in tiny embroidered shoes, were about big enough for a child of three. There was paint on their cheeks to hide their piteous whiteness, and their faces were drawn with that haunting look which long-continued pain gives. As they stood they rested their hands on their com- panions' shoulders, and, when they moved, it was with extreme difficulty. No one took any notice of them. They were simply little girls suffering the usual agonies that custom has ordained a woman THE TUNGLING 171 shall suffer before she is considered a meet play- thing and slave for a man. A woman who would be of any standing at all must so suffer. Poor little uncomplaining mites, they laughed and talked, but their faces, white and strained under the paint, haunted me the livelong night, and I felt that I who stood by and suffered this thing was guilty of a wicked wrong to my fellows. And foot binding may result in death. There was a child whose father, a widower, not knowing what to do with his little girl, an asset of small value, sold her to a woman of ill repute. The little slave was five years old, but as yet, her feet had not been bound. Her mistress of course took her in hand and bound her feet, so that she might be married some day. But her feet being bound did not exempt small Wong Lan from her household duties. Every morning, baby as she was, she had to get up, kindle the fire, and take hot water to her mistress, who, in her turn, did not give the attention they required to the poor little feet. With feet sore, ulcerated and dirty, she went about such household duties as a little child could do, till they grew so bad she could only lie about and moan, and was a nuisance to the woman who had taken her. At last a man living in the same courtyard had pity on her. He was a mason and had worked at the great hospital the foreigners had set up just outside the walls of the city where they lived, and he took her in his arms, a baby not yet seven, and brought her to the doctor. She had cried and cried, he said, and he thought she would die if she were left. The doctor when he took her thought she was going to die whether she were left or not. There and then he took a pair of 172 A WOMAN IN CHINA scissors, snapped two threads and one foot was off, still in its filthy little slipper. The whole leg was gangrenous and they nursed the baby up for a week till she was strong enough to have the leg amputated at the hip. She grew better, though the doctor shook his head over her. The missionaries decided they had better keep her, and as she recovered, they set about getting her crutches. A Chinese woman evidently begins to be self-conscious very soon, for the mite cried bitterly when they wanted to measure her. The Chinese have a great horror of any deformity, and she thought she would be an object of scorn if she went about on crutches, and everyone could see she had only one leg. Her idea was that she should sit all day long on the k'ang, and then it would be hidden. However, her guardians pre- vailed, and presently she was hopping about the missionary compound, and being a pretty, taking little girl soon found friends who forgot, or what was more important, taught Her to forget, that she was crippled. Someone gave her a doll, and with this treasure tucked under her arm, she paid visits from one house to the other, happy as the day was long, petted by Chinese and foreigners alike. But the doctor who had shaken his head over her at first was right. The poison was in her system, and in a little over six months from the day she was brought in to the hospital she died. Poor little mite! For six months she had been perfectly happy. The man who had brought her in made her a coffin, the aliens who had succoured and cared for her laid her there with the doll she had been so proud of in her arms, and told all the Chinese who had known her they might come and say a last farewell. They came, THE TUNGLING 173 and then — oh curious human nature! — someone stole the poor little makeshift doll from the dead baby's arms ! Of course cruelty to children is a sin that is met with in countries nearer home, is, in fact, more common in Christian England than in heathen China. This was a death that was attributable to the low value that is set on the girl child and to the cruel custom of binding the feet. And not hundreds and thousands but millions of women so suffer. The practice, they say, is dying out among the more enlightened in the towns, but in the country, within fifteen miles of Peking, it is in full swing. Not only are these " golden lilies " con- sidered beautiful., but the woman with bound feet is popularly supposed to care more for the caresses of her lord, than she with natural feet. Of course, a man may not choose his wife, his mother does that for him, he may not even see her, but he can, and very naturally often does, ask questions about her. The question he generally asks is not : " Has she a pretty face?" but: "Has she small feet?" But if he did not think about it, the women of his family would consider it for him. A woman told me, how, in the north of Chihli, the custom was for the women of the bridegroom's family to gather round the newly arrived bride who sat there, silent and submissive, while they made comments upon her appearance. " Hoo ! she's ugly ! " Or worst taunt of all, " Hoo ! What big feet she's got ! " Many will tell you it is not the men who insist upon bound feet, but the women. And, if that is so, to m,e it only deepens the tragedy. Imagine 174 A WOMAN IN CHINA how apart the women must be from the men, when they think, without a shadow of truth, that to be pleasing to a man, a woman must be crippled. The women are hardly to be blamed. If they are so ignorant as to believe that no woman with large feet can hope to become a wife and mother, what else can they do but bind the little girls' feet? Would any woman dare deprive her daughter of all chance of wifehood and motherhood by leaving her feet unbound? Oh the lot of a woman in China is a cruel one, civilised into a man's toy and slave. I had a thousand times rather be a negress, one of those business-like trading women of Tarquah, or one of the capable, independent housewives of Keta. But to be a Chinese woman ! God forbid ! It seems very difficult to make a Chinaman under- stand that a woman has any rights, even a foreign woman, apart from a man. I remember being par- ticularly struck with this once at Pao Ting Fu, the capital of Chihli, a walled town about three hours by rail from Peking. I lost a third of my luggage by the way, because the powers that be, having charged me a dollar and a half for its carriage, divided it into three parts, and by the time I had discovered in what corner the last lot was stowed, the train was moving on, and I could only be com- fortably sure it was being taken away from me at the rate of twenty miles an hour. However, the stationmaster assured Dr Lewis, the missionary doctor with whom I was living, that it should be brought back by the next day. Accordingly, next day, accompanied by a coolie who spoke no English, I wended my way to the railway station and inquired for that luggage. The TUG-OF-WAR, BUDDHIST ORPHANAGE. ( See page i.;tS) MISSIONARY COMPOUND, LOOKING EAST. THE TUNGLING 175 coolie had been instructed what to say, and I thought they would simply bring me into contact with my lost property. I would pay any money that was due, and the thing would be finished. But I had not reckoned on my standing, or want of standing, as a woman. Nobody could speak a word of English. In the course of five minutes I should say, the entire station staff of Pao Ting Fu stood around me, and vocifer- ously gave me their views — on the weather and the latest political developments for all I know. If it was about the luggage I was no wiser. Some were dressed in khaki, some in dark cloth with uniform caps, and most had the wild hair that comes to the lower classes with the cutting off of the queue. There were about a dozen of them with a few idlers in blue cotton, patched, dirty, faded, and darned, and some of these wore queues, queues that had been slept in for about a week without attention, and they were all quite anxious to te nice to the foreign woman, and took turns in trying to make her understand. In vain. What they wanted I could not imagine. At last a lane opened, and I guessed the vociferating crowd were saying : " Here is the very man to tackle the situation." There came along a little man in dark cloth who stood before me and in the politest manner laid a dirty, admonitory finger upon my breast. He had a rudimentary knowledge of English but it was very rudimentary, and I remembered promptly that this was a French railway. " Parlez-vous Franfais?" said I, wondering if my French would carry me through. He shook his head. As a matter of fact English, 176 A WOMAN IN CHINA pidgin- English, is the language of China, when another tongue is wanted, and my new friend's English was not at all bad — what there was of it. Though why I should go to their country and expect these people to understand me I'm sure I do not know. " Your luggage is here," said he very slowly, emphasising every word by a tap. " Thank Heaven," I sighed, " take me to it," but he paid no heed. ' You " — and he tapped on solemnly — " must — send — your — husband." This was a puzzler. " My husband," I said meekly, " is dead." It looked like a deadlock. It was apparently impossible to deliver up her luggage to a woman whose husband was dead. Everybody on the plat- form, including the idlers, made some suggestion to relieve the strain, and feeling that it might help matters, I said he had been dead a very long time, I was a lonely orphan and I had no brothers. They probably discussed the likelihood of my having any other responsible male belongings and dismissed it, and the man, who knew English, returned to the charge. "Where — do — you — stay?" and he tapped his way through the sentence. "At Dr Lewis's." I felt like doing it singsong fashion myself. " You — must — tell — Lu Tai Fu — to — come." " But," I remonstrated, " Dr Lewis is busy, and he does not know the luggage." There was another long confabulation, then a brilliant idea flashed like a meteor across the crowd. THE TUNGLING 177 " You — must — go — back — and — write — a — letter," and with a decisive tap my linguist friend stood back, and the whole crowd looked at me as much as to say that settled it most satisfactorily. I argued the matter. I wanted to see the luggage. " The — luggage — is — here " — tapped my friend, reproachfully, as if regretting I should be so foolish — " you — must — go — back — write — one — piecey — letter." "I'll write it here," said I, and after about a quarter of an hour taken up in tapping, I was con- ducted round to the back of the station, an elderly inkpot and a very, very elderly pen with a point like a very rusty pin were produced, but there was no paper. Everyone looked about, under the benches, up at the ceiling, and at last one really resourceful person produced a luggage label of a violent yellow hue, and on the back of that, with some difficulty, for as well as the bad pen, there was a suspicion of gum on the paper, I wrote a letter to " Dear Sir" requesting that responsible individual to hand over my luggage to my servant, I signed my name with as big a flourish as the size of the label would allow, and then I stood back and awaited developments. Everybody in the room looked at that valuable document. They tried it sideways, they tried it upside down, but no light came. At last the linguist remarked with his usual tap : " No— can— read." Well, I could read English, so with great empressement and as if I were conferring a great favour, I read that erudite document aloud to the admiring crowd, even to my own name, and such was the magic of the written word, that in about two M 178 A WOMAN IN CHINA minutes the lost luggage appeared, and was handed over to my waiting coolie! Only when I was gone doubt fell once more upon the company. Could a woman, a masterless woman, be trusted? they ques- tioned. And the stationmaster sent word to Lu Tai Fu that he must have his card to show that it was all right ! If a woman counted for so little in a town where the foreigner was well Known, could I expect much in out-of-the-way parts. I didn't expect much, luckily. The people came and looked at me, and they were invariably courteous and polite, with an old-world courtesy that must have come down to them through the ages, but they did not envy, I felt it very strongly — at bottom they were contemptuous. As I have seen the lower classes in an Australian mining town, as I myself have looked upon a stranger in an outlandish dress in the streets of London, so these country people looked upon me. It was just as well to make the most of a show, because their lives were uneventful, that was all. It began to get on my nerves before I had done, this contemptuous curiosity. I don't know that I was exactly afraid, but I grew to understand why missionaries perish when the people have all appa- rently been well-disposed. These people would not have robbed me themselves, but had I met any of the robbers I had been threatened with in Peking, I am sure not one of them would have raised even a finger to help me, they would not even have protested. I was outside their lives. And at last, at Malanyu, the hills that at first had loomed purple on the horizon, fairly overshadowed us, and I had arrived at the first stage of my THE TUNGLING 179 journey, the Tungling, or Eastern Tombs. We did forty miles that day over the roughest road I had gone yet, and thankful was I when we rumbled through the gates of the dirty, crowded, little town. We put up at the smallest and filthiest inn I had yet met. Chinese towns, even the smallest country hamlet, are always suggestive of slums, and Malanyu was worse than usual, but I slept the sleep of the utterly weary, and next morning at sunrise I had breakfast and went to see the tombs. I went in state, in my own cart with an extra mule on in front, I seated under the tilt a little back, and my servant and the head " cartee man " on the shafts ; and then I discovered that if a loaded cart is an abomination before the Lord, a light cart is something unspeak- able. But we had seen the wall that went round the tombs the night before, just the other side of the town, so I consoled myself with the reflection that my sufferings would not be for long. When the Imperial Manchus sought a last resting- place for themselves they had the whole of China to choose from, and they took with Oriental disregard for humbler people ; but — saving grace — they chose wisely though they chose cruelly. They have taken for their own a place just where the mountains begin, a place that must be miles in extent. It is of rich alluvial soil swept down by the rains from the hills, and all China, with her teeming population, cannot afford to waste one inch of soil. The tiniest bit of arable land, as I had been seeing for the last three days, is put to some use, it is tilled and planted and carefully tended, though it bear only a single fruit- tree, only a handful of grain, but here we entered a park, waste land covering many miles, wasted with 180 A WOMAN IN CHINA a royal disregard for the people's needs. It lay in a great bay of the hills, sterile, stony, rugged hills with no trace of green upon them, hills that stand up a perfect background to a most perfect place of tombs. I had thought the resting-place of the Mings wonderful, but surely there is no such place for the honoured dead as that the Manchus have set up at the Eastern Tombs. Immediately we entered the gateway, the cart jolting wickedly along a hardly defined track, I found myself in a forest of firs and pines that grew denser as we advanced. Here and there was a poplar or other deciduous tree, green with the greenness of Maytime, but the touch of lighter colour only empha- sised the sombreness of the pines and firs that, with their dark foliage, deepened the solemnity of the scene. Through their branches peeped the deep blue sky, and every now and again they opened out a little, and beyond I could see the bare hills, brown, and orange, and purple, but always beautiful, with the shadows chasing each other over them, and losing themselves in their folds. Spacious, grand, silent, truly an ideal place for the burial of Emperors and their consorts is hidden here in the heart of mysterious, matter-of-fact China, and once again I was shown, as I was being shown every day, another side of China from the toiling thousands I saw in the great city and on the country roads. Dotted about in this great park, with long vistas in between^ are the tombs. They are enclosed in walls, walls of the pinkish red that encloses all imperial grounds, generally there is a caretaker, and they look for all the world like comfortable houses, picturesque and artistic, nestling secluded and away THE TUNGLING 181 from the rush and roar of cities, homes where a man may take his well-earned rest. The filthy inn at which I stayed, the reeking little town of Malanyu, though it is at the very gates, is as far-removed from all contact with the tombs as are the slums of Notting Dale from the mansions in Park Lane, or the sordid, mean streets of Paddington from the home of the King in Buckingham Palace. The birds, the innumerable, much-loved birds of China sang in the trees their welcome to the glorious May morning, and the only thing out of keeping was my groaning, jolting, complaining Peking cart and the shouts of the " cartee man " assuring the mules, so I have been told, that the morals of their female relatives were certainly not above suspicion. Here and there, among the trees, rose up marble pillars tall and stately, carved with dragons and winged at the top, such as one sees in representa- tions of Babylon and Nineveh, there was a marble bridge, magnificent, with the grass growing up between the great paving-stones that here, as every- where in China, seem to mark the small value that has been put on human flesh and blood, for by human hands have they been placed here, and the uprights are crowned by the symbolic cloud form, caught in the marble. This bridge crosses no stream. It is evidently just a manifestation of power, the power that crushes, and beyond it is an avenue of marble animals. There they stand on the green sward, the green sward stolen from the hungry, curving away towards the p'ia lou stand, as they have stood for many a long year, horses, elephants, fabulous beasts that might have come out of the Book of Revelations, guarding the entrance 182 A WOMAN IN CHINA to the place of rest. They are not nearly so magni- ficent as the avenue at the Ming Tombs, they are only quaintly Chinese, it is the winged pillars, the silence, the sombre pine and fir-trees, and the ever- lasting hills behind that give them dignity. And now Tuan became very important. I began to feel that he had arranged the whole for my benefit, and was keeping the best piece back to crown it all. We came to a piece of wild country and I was re- quested to get out of the cart. Getting out of the cart where there was no place to step was always a business. I was stiff from the jolting, felt disin- clined to be very acrobatic, and Tuan always felt it his bounden duty to stretch out his arms to catch me, or break my fall. He was so small, though he was round and fat, that he always complicated matters by making me feel that if I did fall I should certainly materially damage him, but it was no good protest- ing, it was the correct thing for him to help his Missie out of her cart, and he was prepared to perish in the attempt. However, here was a soft cushion of fragrant pine needles, so I scrambled down with- out any of the qualms from which I usually suffered. We had come to a halt for a moment by the steep side of a little wooded hill where a narrow footpath wound round it. Just such a modest little path between steep rising ground one might see in the Surrey Hills. It invites to a secluded glen, but no cart could possibly go along it, it is necessary to walk. I turned the corner of the hill and lo! there was a paved way, a newly paved way, such as I have seldom seen in China. The faint morning breeze stirred among the pine needles, making a low, mysterious whispering, and out against the back- 1? *fl THE TUNGLING ground stood, a splash of brilliant, glowing colour, the many roofs of golden-brown tiles that cover the mausoleum of the great woman who once ruled over China, the last who made a stand, a futile stand, against foreign aggression, and now a foreigner and a woman, unarmed and alone, might come safely and stand beside her tomb. Perhaps that was the best way to view it, at any rate inside I could not go, for the key I discovered was at Malanyu, and it would have taken me at least half a day to go back and get it. Besides I don't think I wanted to go inside. I would not for the world have spoilt the memory that remains in my mind by any tawdry detail such as I had seen at the younger Empress's funeral. It was just a little spoilt as it was by my boy, who came along mysteri- ously and pointed with a secret finger at the custodian of the tomb, who had not the keys. " Suppose Missie makee littee cumshaw. Sup- pose my payee one dollar." And I expect the man did get perhaps sixty cents, because Tuan was bent on impressing on these people the fact that his Missie was a very important woman indeed. It was worth it^ it was well worth it. They say that the old in China "is passing away. " Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings." Will they sweep away these tombs and give this land to the people? I hope not, I think not, I pray not. The present in China is inextricably mixed up with the past. " Oh Judah keep thy solemn feast, perform thy vows." Sometimes it is surely well that the beautiful should be kept for a nation, even at great cost. CHAPTER XI A WALLED CITY Numerous walled towns — The dirt of them— T'ung Chou— Romance of the evening light — My own little walled city — The gateways— Hospitable landlady — Bald heads— My land- lady's room — A return present—" The ringleaders have been executed " — Summary justice — To the rescue of the missionaries at Hsi An Fu — The Elder Brother Society- Primitive method of attack and defence — The sack of I Chun. OH that first walled city! It was the first of many walled cities, many of them so small that it did not take us more than a quarter of an hour to cross from gate to gate ; but to enter one and all was like open- ing a door into the past, into the life our forbears lived before the country I was born and brought up in was ever thought of. When I was a little girl, I cherished a desire to marry a German baron, a German baron of the Middle Ages, who lived in a castle, and 1 could not help thinking, as the influenza left me and I regained my powers of thought, that here were the towns of my German baron's time — dirt and all. In my childhood I had never thought of the dirt, or perhaps I had not minded. One thing is certain, in the clean land of my childhood I never realised what the dirt that comes from a packed population, from seething humanity, can be like. The Chinese live in these crowded towns for 184 A WALLED CITY 185 the sake of security — of security in this twentieth century — for even still, China seems to be much in the condition of Europe of the Middle Ages, safety cannot be absolutely counted upon inside the gates of a town, but at least it is a little safer than the open country. We passed through Tung Chou when the soft tender evening shadows were falling upon battle- ments and walls built by a nation that, though it is most practical, is also one of the most poetical on earth; we passed through Chi Chou when the shadows were long in the early morning, and in the sunlight was the hope of the new-born day. Through the gate was coming a train of Peking carts, of laden donkeys, of great grain carts with seven mules, all bound for the capital in the south. I remember these two perhaps because they were the first of many walled towns, but Tsung Hua Chou will always remain in my memory as my own little walled city, the one that I explored carefully all by myself, and, when I think of a walled town, my thoughts always fly back to that little town, three- quarters of a mile square, at the foot of the hills that mark the limit of the great plain of China proper. It was Tuan's suggestion we should stay there. I would have lingered at the tombs, but he was emphatic. " Missie want make picture. More better we stop Tsung Hua Chou. Fine picture Tsung Hua Chou." There weren't fine pictures at Tsung Hua Chou. He had struck up a great friendship with the "cartee man," and, perhaps, either he or the " cartee man " had a favourite gaming-house, or a favourite 186 A WOMAN IN CHINA singing girl in the town. At any rate we went, and I, for some hardly explainable reason, am glad we did. The road from the tombs was simply appalling. The hills frowned down on us, close on either side, high and steep and rugged, but the rough valley bottom, up which we went, was the wildest I was to see for a long time. To say I was tossed and jolted, is to but mildly express the condition of affairs. I sat on a cushion, I packed my bedding round me, and with both my hands I held on to the side of the cart, and if for one moment I relaxed the rigidity of my aching arms, my head or some other portion of my aching anatomy, was brought into contact with the woodwork of the cart, just in the place I had reckoned the woodwork could not possibly have reached me. There were little streams and bridges across them, which I particu- larly dreaded, for the bridges were always roughly paved, but it was nobody's business to see that the road and the pavement met neatly, and the jolt the cart gave, both getting on and getting off, nearly shook the soul out of my body. I thought of walking, for our progress was very slow, but in addition to the going being bad, the mules went just a little faster than I did, three and a half miles an hour to my three, and I felt there was nothing for it but to resign myself and make the best of a bad job. Not for worlds would I have lingered an hour longer on that road than I was absolutely obliged. And yet, bad as it was, it was the best road I had till I got back to Peking again. There may be worse roads than those of China, and there may be worse ways of getting over them than in a A WALLED CITY 187 Peking cart, but I do trust I never come across them. We entered the gates of the city as the evening shadows were growing long, and as usual, I was carried back to the days of the Crusaders — or farther still to Babylon — as we rumbled under the arched gateway, but inside it was like every other town I have seen, dirty, sordid, crowded, with uneven pavements that there was no getting away from. Within the curtain wall, that guarded the gate, there were the usual little stalls for the sale of cakes, big, round, flat cakes and little scone-like cakes, studded with sesame seed, or a bright pink sweetmeat ; there were the sellers of pottery ware, basins and pots of all sorts, and the people stared at the foreign woman, the wealthy foreign woman who ran to two carts. It is an unheard-of thing in China for a Chinese woman to travel alone, though sometimes the foreign missionary women do, but they would invariably be accompanied by a Chinese woman, and one woman would not be likely to have two carts. One thing was certain however, my outfit was all that it should have been, bar the lack of a male protector. It bespoke me a woman of wealth and position in the eyes of the country folk, and the people of the little towns through which I passed. It is possible that a mule litter might have enhanced my dignity; but after all, two Peking carts was very much like having a first-class compartment all to myself. There were no foreigners, that I could hear of, in Tsung Hua Chou. The missionaries had fled during the Boxer trouble, and never come back, so that I was more of a show than usual, though 188 A WOMAN IN CHINA indeed, in all the towns I passed through I was a show, and the people stared, and chattered, and crowded round the carts, and evidently closely questioned the carters. They tell me Chinese carters are often rascals, but I grew to like mine very much before we parted company. They were stolid men in blue, with dirty rags wrapped round their heads to keep off the dust, and I have no reason to suppose that they affected water any more than the rest of the population, whereby I perceive, my affections are not so much guided by a desire for cleanliness as I had once supposed. They both had the hands of artists, artists with very dirty nails, so it may be a feeling of brotherhood had something to do with my feelings, for I am hoping you who read will count me an artist in a small way. What romance they wove about me, for the benefit of the questioning people, I don't know, but the result of their communications was that the crowd pressed closer, and stared harder, and they were evil-smelling, and had never, never in all their lives been washed. I ceased to wonder that I ached all over with the jolting and rumbling of the cart:, I only wondered if something worse had not befallen me, and how it happened that these people, who crowded round, staring as if never in their lives had they seen a foreign woman before, did not fall victims to some horrible pestilence. For once inside Tsung Hua Chou I saw no beauty in it, for all the romantic walls outside. The evil-smelling streets we rumbled through to the inn were wickedly narrow, and down the centre hung notices in Chinese characters on long strips of OUTSIDE A WALLED CITY. GATE OF A WALLED CITY. A WALLED CITY 189 paper white and red, and pigs, and children, and creaking wheelbarrows, and men with loads, blocked the way. But we jolted over the step into the courtyard of the inn at last, quite a big courtyard, and quite a busy inn. This was an inn where they apparently ran a restaurant, for as I climbed stiffly out of my cart a servant, carrying a tray of little basins containing the soups and stews the Chinese eat, was so absorbed in gazing at me he ran into the " cartee man," and a catastrophe occurred which was the occasion of much bad language. The courtyard was crowded. There were blue- tilted Peking carts, there were mules, there were donkeys, there were men of all sorts ; but there was only one wretched little room for me. It was very dirty too, and I was very tired. What was to be done? " Plenty Chinese gentlemen sleep here," declared Tuan, and I could quite believe it. At the door of every lattice-windowed room that looked out on to that busy courtyard, stood one, or perhaps two Chinese of the better class — long petticoats, shaven head, queue and all — each held in his hand a long, silver-mounted pipe from which he took languid whiffs, and he looked under his eyelids, which is the polite way, at the foreign woman. The foreign woman was very dirty, very tired, and very uncom- fortable, and the room looked very hopeless. The " cartee men " declared that this was the best inn in the town, and anyhow I was disinclined to go out and look for other quarters. Then there came tottering forward an old woman with tiny feet, one eye and a yellow flower stuck in the knot at the back of her bald head. China is the country of bald 190 A WOMAN IN CHINA women. The men, I presume, would not mind it very much, as for so long they have shaven off at least half their hair, but the women certainly must, for if they can they dress their dark hair very elaborately. And yet have I seen many women, like this innkeeper's wife, with a head so bald that but a few strands of hair cover its nakedness, yet those few poor hairs are gathered together into an arrangement of black silk shaped something like a horn, and beside it is placed a flower, a rose, a pink oleander blossom, or a bright yellow flower for which I have no name. That flower gives a finish to a sleek and well-dressed head, when the owner has plenty of hair, but when she has only the heavy horn of silk, half a dozen hairs, and the rest of her bald pate covered with a black varnish, it is a poor travesty. When a girl marries, immediately after her husband has lifted her veil and she is left to the women of his family they pluck out the front hairs on her forehead, so as to give a square effect, and the hair is drawn very tightly back and gathered generally into this horn. I suspect this heavy horn is responsible for the baldness, though an American of my acquaintance declares it is the plucking out of the hairs on the forehead. " The rest of the hair," says he, " kinder gets discouraged." This innkeeper's wife was very kindly. She said I should not sleep in that room, I should have her room, and she would go to her mother's. The mother was a surprise to me. I hope when I am as old as she looked I shall have a mother to go to. Now I do not as a rule embrace my landlady. In England I couldn't even imagine myself feeling particularly kindly towards a dirty little woman clad A WALLED CITY 191 in a shirt and trousers of exceedingly dirty blue cotton, but the intention was so evidently kind and hospitable, I knew not a word of her tongue, and was by no means sure the valued Tuan would translate my words of thanks properly, so I could but take both her very dirty little hands in mine, clasp them warmly, and try and look my thanks. Then I inspected her room. It was approached through an entrance where lime was stored, it was rather dark, and it was of good size, though on one side was stacked a supply of stores for the restaurant. Chinese macaroni, that looks as if it were first cousin to sheet gelatine, stale eggs and other nondescript eatables. There was a k'ang, of course, quite a family k'ang, and there was a large mirror on one wall. I had forgotten my camp mirror, so I looked in it eagerly, and the reflection left me chastened. I hadn't expected the journey to improve my looks, but I did hope it had not swelled up one cheek, and bunged up the other eye. I felt I did not want to stay in the room with that mirror, but there were other things worse than the mirror in it. The beautiful lattice-work window had apparently never been opened since the first cover of white tissue paper had been put on it, and the smell of human occupancy there defies my poor powers of descrip- tion. The dirty little place I had at first disdained, had at least a door opening on to the comparatively fresh air of the courtyard. I told Tuan to explain that while I was delighted to see her room, and admired everything very much in it, nothing would induce me to deprive her of its comforts. She certainly was friendly. As I looked in the chasten- ing mirror, I, like a true woman, I suppose, put up 192 A WOMAN IN CHINA a few stray locks that the jolting cart had shaken out of place, and she promptly wanted to do my hair herself with a selection from an array of elderly combs with which she probably dressed her own scanty locks. That was too much. I had to decline, I trust she thought it was my modesty, and then she offered me some of the macaroni. I tried to say I had nothing to give in return and then Tuan remarked, "As friend, as friend." So as a friend, from that little maimed one-eyed old woman up in the hills of China, I took a handful of macaroni and had nothing to give in return. I hope she feels as friendly towards me as I shall always do towards her. It is not always that the difficulty of giving a return present is on the foreign side, sometimes it is the Chinese who feel it. I remember a traveller for a business house telling me how on one occasion he had gone to a village and entertained the elders at dinner, giving them brandy which they loved, and liqueurs which seemed to the unsophisticated village fathers ambrosia fit for the gods. The next day, when he was about to take his departure, a small procession approached him and one of them bore on a tray a little Chinese handleless cup covered with another. They said he could speak Chinese, so there was no need for an interpreter, that he had given them a very good time, they were very grate- ful, and they wished to make him a present by which he might remember them sometimes. But their village was poor and small. It contained nothing worth his acceptance, and after much con- sultation, they had come to the conclusion that the best way would be to present him with the money, A WALLED CITY 193 so that he might buy something for himself when he came to Peking or some other large town. Thereupon the cup was presented, the cover lifted off, and in the bottom lay a ten cent piece, worth about twopence halfpenny. Probably it seemed quite an adequate present to men who count their incomes by cash of which a thousand go to the dollar. I don't think my landlady minded much my declining the hospitality of her room. Possibly she only wished me to see its glories, and presently she brought to the little room I had at first so despised, and now looked upon, if not as a haven of rest, at least as one of fresh air, a couple of nice hard wood stools, and a beautifully carved k'ang table thick with grease. " Say must make Missie comfortable," said Tuan with the usual suggestion he had done it himself. And those stools were covered, much to my surprise, with red woollen tapestry, and the pattern was one that I had seen used many a time in a little town on the Staffordshire moors, where their busi- ness is to dye and print. And here was one of the results of their labours, a "Wardle rag," as we used to call them, up among the hills of Northern China. I was too tired to do anything but go to bed that night as soon as I had had my dinner. I had it, as usual, on the k'ang table, the dirt shrouded by my humble tablecloth, and curious eyes watched me, even as I watched the trays of full basins and the trays of empty ones that were for ever coming and going across the courtyard. Next morning my friendly landlady brought to see me two other small-footed women, both smoking N 194 A WOMAN IN CHINA long pipes, women who said, through Tuan, their ages were forty and sixty respectively, and who examined, with interest, me and my belongings. They felt my boots so much, good, substantial, leather-built by Peter Yapp, that at last I judged they would like to see what was underneath, and took off a boot and stocking for their inspection, and the way they felt my foot up and down as if it were something they had never before met in their lives, amused me very much. At least at first it amused me, and then it saddened me. Though they held out their own poor maimed feet, they did not return the compliment much as I desired it. They took me across the courtyard into another room where, behind lattice-work windows, that had not been opened for ages, were two more women sitting on the k'ang, and two little shaven-headed children. These were younger women, tall and stout, with feet so tiny, they called my attention to them, that it did not seem to me possible any woman could support herself upon them. My boy was not allowed in, so of course I could not talk to them, could only smile and drink tea. These two younger women, who were evidently of superior rank, had their hair most elaborately dressed and wore most gorgeous raiment. One was clad in purple satin with a little black about it, and the other, a mere girl of eighteen, but married, for her hair was no longer in a queue, and her forehead was squared, wore a coat of pale blue silk brocade and grass-green trousers of the same material. Their faces were impassive, as are the faces of Chinese women of the better class, but they smiled, evidently liked their tortured feet to be noticed, gave A WALLED CITY 195 me tea from the teapot on the k'ang table, and then presently all four, with the gaily dressed babies, tottered out into the courtyard, the older women leading the toddling children, and helping the younger, and, with the aid of settles, they climbed into two Peking carts, my elderly friends taking their places on the outside, whereby I judged they were servants or household slaves. "Chinese wives," said Tuan, but whether they were the wives of one man, or of two, I had no means of knowing. The costumes of the two younger were certainly not those in which I would choose to travel on a Chinese road in a Peking cart, but the Chinese have a proverb : " Abroad wear the new, at home it does not matter," so they probably thought my humble mole-coloured cotton crepe, equally out of place. And when they were gone I set out to explore the town. It was only a small place, built square, with two main roads running north, and south, and east, and west, and cutting each other at right angles in the heart of it. They were abominably paved. No vehicle but a springless Peking cart would have dreamt of making its way across that pavement, but then probably no vehicle save a cart or a wheel- barrow in all the years of the city's life had ever been thought of there. The remaining streets were but evil-smelling alley-ways, narrow in comparison with the main ways which, anywhere else, I should have deemed hopelessly inadequate, thronged as they were with people and encroached upon by the shops that stood close on either side. They had no glass fronts, of course, these shops, but otherwise, 196 A WOMAN IN CHINA they were not so very unlike the shops one sees in the poorer quarters of the great towns in England. But there was evidently no Town Council to regu- late the use to which the streets should be put. The dyer hung his long strips of blue cloth half across the roadway, careless of the convenience of the passer-by, the man who sold cloth had out little tables or benches piled with white and blue calico — I have seen tradesmen do the same in King's Road, Chelsea — the butcher had his very disagreeable wares fully displayed half across the roadway, the gentleman who was making mud bricks for the repair of his house, made them where it was handiest in the street close to the house, and the man who sold cooked provisions, with his little portable kitchen and table, set himself down right in the fairway and tempted all-comers with little basins of soup, fat, pale-looking steamed scones, hard-boiled eggs or meat turnovers. This place, hidden behind romantic grey walls, at which I had wondered in the evening light, was in the morning just like any other city, Peking with the glory and beauty gone out of it, and the people who thronged those streets were just the poorer classes of Peking, only it seemed there were more naked children and more small-footed women with elaborately dressed hair tottering along, balancing themselves with their arms. I met a crowd accompanying the gay scarlet poles, flags, musical instruments and the red sedan chair of a wedding. The poor little bride, shut up in the scarlet chair, was going to her husband's house and leaving her father's for ever. It is to be hoped she would find favour in the sight of her husband and DEAD GODS AT TSUNG HUA CHOU. TEMPLE COURTYARD AT TSUNG HUA CHOU. A WALLED CITY 197 her husband's women-folk. It was more important probably, that she should please the latter. The bridal party made a great noise, but then all in that town was noise, dirt, crowding, and evil smells. The only peaceful place in it was the courtyard of the little temple close against the city wall. Out- side it stand two hideous figures with hands flung out in threatening attitude, and inside were more figures, all painted in the gayest colours. What they meant I have not lore enough to know, but they were very hideous, the very lowest form of art. There was the recording angel with a black face and the open book — after all, the recording angel must often wear a black face — and there was the eternal symbol that has appealed through all ages to all people, and must appeal one would think above all, to this nation that longs so ardently for offspring, the mother with the child upon her knee. But they were all ugly to my Western eyes, and the only thing that charmed me was the silence, the cleanliness, and the quiet of the courtyard, the only place in all the busy little city that was at peace. When I engaged Tuan I had thought he was to do all the waiting upon me I needed, but it seems I made a mistake. The farther I got from Peking the greater his importance became, and here he could not so much as carry for me the lightest wrap. His business appeared to be to engage other people to do the work. There was one dilapidated wretch to carry the camera, another the box with the plates, and yet a third bore the black cloth I would put over my head to focus my pictures properly. It was not a bit of good protesting, two minutes after I got rid 198 A WOMAN IN CHINA of one lot of followers, another took their place, and as everyone had to be paid, apparently, I often thought, for the pleasure of looking at me, I resigned myself to my fate. Accompanied by all the idlers and children in the town I climbed the ramp on to the walls, which are in perfect order, three miles round and on the top from fifteen feet to twenty broad. That ramp must have been always steep, the last thing a Chinese ever thinks about is comfort, steep almost as the walls themselves, and everywhere the stones are gone, making it a work of difficulty to climb to the top. Tuan helped me in approved Chinese fashion, putting his hand underneath my elbow, and once I was there the town was metamorphosed, it was again the romantic city I had seen from the plain in the evening light. Now the early morning sunlight, with all the promise of the day in it, fell upon graceful curved Chinese roofs and innumer- able trees, dainty with the delicate vivid verdure that comes in the spring as a reward to a country where the winter has been long, bitter, and iron- bound. The walls of most Chinese cities are built square, with right angles at the four corners, but in at least two that I have been in, T'ung Chou and Pao Ting Fu, one corner is built out in a bow. I rather admired the effect at first, till I found it was a mark of deepest disgrace. There had been a parricide committed in the town. When such a terrible thing occurs a corner of the city wall must be pulled down and built out ; a second one, another corner is pulled down and built out, and a third likewise ; but the fourth time such a crime is committed in the A WALLED CITY 199 luckless town the walls must be razed to the ground. But such a disgrace has never occurred in any town in the annals of Chinese history, those age-long annals that go back farther than any other nation's, for if a town should be so unlucky as to have harboured four such criminals within its walls they generally managed, by the payment of a sum of money, to get a city that had some of its corners still intact to take the disgrace upon itself. I strongly suspect too, that it is only when the offender is in high places that his crime is thus commemorated, for I have only heard of these two cases, and yet as short a while ago as 1912 there was a terrible murder in Pao Ting Fu that shocked the town. It appeared there was an idle son, who instead of working for his family, spent all his time attending to his cage bird, taking it out for walks, encouraging it to sing, hunting the graves outside the town for insects for it. His poor old mother sighed over his uselessness. " If it were not for the bird ! " said she. The young blood in China, it seems, goes to the dogs over a cage bird, a lark or a thrush, as the young man in modern Europe comes to grief over horse-racing, so we see that human nature is the same all the world over. This Chinese mother brooded over her boy's wasted life, and one day when he was out she opened the cage door and the bird flew away. When he came in he asked for the bird and she said nothing, only with her large, sharp knife went on shredding up the vegetables that she was putting into a large cauldron of boiling water for supper. He asked again for the bird. Still she took no 200 A WOMAN IN CHINA notice, and he seized her knife and slit her up into small pieces and put her into the cauldron. He was taken, and tried, and was put to death by slicing into a thousand pieces — yes, even in modern China — but they did not think it necessary to pull down another corner of the city wall. Possibly they felt the disgrace of a bygone age was enough for Pao Ting Fu. The corners of the walls of Tsung Hua Chou were as they were first built, rectangular, and the watch-towers at those corners and over the four gates from the distance looked imposing, all that they should be, but close at hand I saw that they were tumbling into ruins, the doors were fallen off the hinges, the window-frames were broken, all was desolate and empty. " Once the soldier she watch here," said my boy, whose pronouns were always somewhat mixed "Why not now? " " No soldier here now. She go work in gold mine ninety li away. Gold mine belong Plesident." Tuan had got as far as the fact that a President had taken the place of the Manchu Emperor, but I wondered very much whether the inhabitants of Tsung Hua Chou had. I meditated on my way back to a Missie's inn " on the limitations of the practical Chinese mind that because it is practical, I suppose, cannot conceive of the liberty, equality, and fraternity that a Republic denotes. The Presi- dent, to the humble Chinese in the street, has just taken the place of the Emperor, he is the one who rules over them, his soldiers are withdrawn. That there was a war in Mongolia, a rebellion impending in the south, were items of news that had not reached NORTH-WEST CORNER OF WALL, PAO TING FU. A COOLIE IN THE STREET, TSUNG HUA CHOU. A WALLED CITY 201 the man in the street in Tsung Hua Chou who, feeling that the soldiers must be put to some use, concluded they were working in the President's gold mine ninety li away. A foreigner went to a Chinese tailor the other day to make him a suit of clothes, and he found occasion to complain that the gentleman's prices had gone up considerably since he employed him last. The man of the scissors was equal to the occasion, and explained that, since " revelations," so many Chinese had taken to wearing foreign dress, he was obliged to charge more. " You belong revolution ? " asked the inquiring foreigner, anxious to find out how far liberty, fraternity, and equality had penetrated. The tailor looked at him more in sorrow than in scorn. How could he be so foolish. " I no belong revelation," he explained carefully, as one who was instructing where no instruction should have been necessary. The thing was self- evident, " I belong tailor man." When the revolution first dawned upon the country people all they realised — when they realised anything at all — was that there was no longer an Emperor, therefore they supposed they would no longer have to pay taxes. When they found that Emperor or no Emperor taxes were still required of them, they just put the President in the Emperor's place. I strongly suspect that if the greater part of the inhabitants of my walled city were to be questioned as to the revolution they would reply like the tailor : " No belong revolution, belong Tsung Hua Chou!" But in truth the civilisation of China is still sq 202 A WOMAN IN CHINA much like that of Babylon and Nineveh, that it is best for the poor man, if he can, to efface himself. He does not pray for rights as yet. He only prays that he may slip through life unnoticed, that he may not come in contact with the powers that rule him, for no matter who is right or who is wrong bitter experience has taught him that he will suffer. We do not realise that sufficiently in the West when we talk of China. We judge her by our own standards. The time may come when this may be a right way of judging, but it has not come yet. Rather should we judge as they judged in the days of the old Testament, in the days of Nineveh and Babylon, when the proletariat, the slaves, were as naught in the sight of God or man. A man told me how in the summer of 1912, travelling in the interior, he came to a small city in one of the central provinces, a city not unlike Tsung Hua Chou, like indeed a thousand other little cities in this realm of Cathay. The soldiers quartered there had not been paid, and they had turned to and looted the town. The unwise city men, instead of submitting lest a worse thing happen unto them, had telegraphed their woes to Peking, and orders had come down to the General in command that the ring- leaders must be executed. But no wise General is going to be hard on his own soldiers. This General certainly was not. Still justice had to be satisfied, and he was not at a loss. He sent a body of soldiers to the looted shops, where certain luckless men were sadly turning over the damaged property. These they promptly arrested. The English on- looker, who spoke Chinese, declared to me solemnly these arrested men were the merchants themselves, A WALLED CITY 203 their helpers and coolies. That was nothing to the savage soldiery. There had to be victims. Had not the order come from the central government. Some of the men, there were twenty in all, they beat and left dead on the spot, the rest they dragged to the yamen. The traveller, furious and helpless, followed. Of course the guilt of the merchants was a foregone conclusion. They never execute anyone who does not confess his guilt and the justice of his sentence in China, but they have means of making sure of the confession. Presently out the unfor- tunate men came again, stripped to the waist, with their arms tied up high behind them, prepared, in fact, for death. The soldiers dragged them along, they protesting their innocence to unheeding ears. Their women and children came out, running alongside the mournful procession, clinging to the soldiers and to their husbands and fathers, and praying for mercy. They tripped and fell, and the soldiers, the soldiers in khaki, pushed them aside, and stepped over them, and dragged on their victims. The traveller followed. No one took any notice of him, and what could he do, though his heart was sore, one against so many. Through the narrow, filthy streets they went, past their own looted shops. They looked about them wildly, but there was none to help, and before them marched the executioner, with a great sharp sword in his hands, and always the soldiers in modern uniform emphasised the barbarity of the crime. Presently they had distanced the wailing women and were outside the walls, but the foreign onlooker was still with them. " And one was a boy not twenty," he said with 204 A WOMAN IN CHINA a sharp, indrawn breath, wiping his face as he told the ghastly tale. They knelt in a row, just where the walls of their own town frowned down on them, and one by one the executioner cut off their heads. The death of the first in the line was swift enough, but, as he approached the end of the row the man's arm grew tired and he did not get the last two heads right off. " I saw one jump four times," said the shocked onlooker, " before he died." And then they telegraphed to Peking that order had been restored, and the ringleaders executed. Since I heard that man's story, I always read that order has been restored in any Chinese city with a shudder, and wonder how many innocents have suffered. For I have heard stories like that, not of one city, or told by one man, but of various cities, and told by different men. The Chinese, it seems to me, copy very faithfully the European news- papers, the great papers of the Western world. Horrors like that are never read in a Western paper, therefore you never see such things reported in the Chinese papers. After all they are only the prole- tariat, the slaves of Babylon or Nineveh. Who counted a score or so of them slain? Order has been restored, comes the message for the benefit of the modern world, and in the little city the bloody heads adorn the walls and the bodies lie outside to be torn to pieces by the wonks and the vultures. And when I heard tales like this, I wondered whether it was safe for a woman to be travelling alone. It is safe, of course, for the Chinaman, strange as it may sound after telling such tales, is at bottom more law-abiding than the average A WALLED CITY 205 European. True, he is more likely to insult or rob a woman than a man, because he has for so long1 regarded a woman as of so much less consequence than a man, that when he considers the matter he cannot really believe that any nation could hold a different opinion. Still, in all probability, she will be safe, just as in all probability she might march by herself from Land's End to John o' Groats without being molested. She may be robbed and murdered, and so she may be robbed and murdered in China. The Chinese are robbed and murdered often enough themselves poor things. Also they do not surfer in silence. They revenge themselves when they can. A man travelling for the British and American Tobacco Company, he was a young man, not yet eight-and-twenty, told me how, once, outside a small walled town, Ke came upon a howling mob, and parting them after the lordly fashion of the Englishman, who knows he can use his hands, he saw they were crowding round a pit half filled with quicklime. In it, buried to his middle, was a ghastly creature with his eyes scooped out, and the hollows filled up with quicklime. " If I had had a pistol handy," said the teller of the tale, " I would have shot him. I couldn't have helped myself. It seemed the only thing to put him out of his misery, but, after all, I think he was past all feeling, and I wonder what the people would have done to me ! " They told him, when he investigated, that this man was a robber, that he had robbed and murdered without mercy, and so, when he fell into their hands, they had taken vengeance. 206 A WOMAN IN CHINA Was that Babylon, or Nineveh, I wondered? Since such things happen in China one feels that the age of Babylon and Nineveh has not yet gone by. Talk with but a few men who have wandered into the interior, and you realise the strong necessity for these walled towns. When the rumour of the slaughter of the Manchus, and the killing in the confusion of eight Europeans at Hsi An Fu in Shensi in October 1911, reached Peking, nine young men banded themselves together into the Shensi Relief Force, and set out from the capital to relieve the mission- aries cut off there. One of these young men it was my good fortune to meet, and the story of their doings, told at first hand, unrolled for me the leaves of history. They set out to help the men and women of their own colour, but as they passed west from Tai Yuan Fu, again and again, the people of the country appealed to them to stop and help them. The Elder Brother Society, the Ko Lao Hui were on the warpath, and, with whatever good intentions this society had originated, it was, on this way from Tai Yuan Fu to Hsi An Fu, nothing less than a band of robbers, pillaging and murdering, and even the walled cities were hardly a safeguard. Village after village, with no such defences, was wrecked, burned, and destroyed, and their inhabitants were either slain or refugees in the mountains. And the suffering that means, with the bitter winter of China ahead of them, is ghastly to think of. They died, of course, and those who were slain by the robbers probably suffered the least. "What could we do? What could we possibly do?" asked my informant pitifully. A WALLED CITY 207 At last they came to Sui Te Chou, a walled city, and Sui Te Chou was for the moment triumphant. It had driven off the robbers. The Elder Brother Society had held the little city closely invested. They had built stone towers, and, from the top of them, had fired into the city, and at the defenders on the walls, and, under cover of this fire from the towers, they had attempted to scale the battlements. But the people on the walls had pushed them down with long spears, and had poured boiling water upon them, and, finally, the robbers had given way, and some braves, issuing from the south gate had fallen upon them, killing many and capturing thirty of them. It was a short shrift for them, and a festoon of heads adorned the gateway under which the foreigners passed. But, though victorious, the braves of Sui Te Chou knew right well that the lull was only momentary. They were reversing tEe Scriptural order of things, and beating their ploughshares into swords. The brigands would be back as soon as they had rein- forcements, the battle would be to the strong and it would indeed be " Woe to the Vanquished ! " "We could not help them. We could not," reiterated the teller of the tale sadly ; " we just had to go on." It was old China, he said, let us hope the last of old China. In that town were English missionaries, a man and his wife, another man and two little children, members of the English Baptist Church, dressed in Chinese dress, the men with queues. These they rescued, and took along with them, and glad were they to have two more able-bodied men in the party, even though they were counterbalanced 208 A WOMAN IN CHINA by the presence of the woman and two children, fof everywhere along the track were evidences of the barbaric times in which they lived. Human heads in wicker cages were common objects of the way- side, and the wolves came down from the mountains and gnawed at the dead bodies, or attacked the sick and wounded. Old China was a ghastly place that autumn of 1911, during the "bloodless" revolution. Chung Pu they reached immediately after it had been attacked by six hundred men. "I had to kick a dog away that was gnawing at a dead body as we led the lady into a house for the night," said the narrator. " I could only implore her not to look." But at I Chun things were worse still. They reached it just as it had fallen into the hands of the Elder Brother Society, and they began to think they had taken those missionaries out of the frying-pan into the fire. I Chiin is a walled city up in the mountains of Shensi, and the only approach was by a pathway so narrow that it only allowed of one mule litter at a time. On one side was a steep precipice, on the other the city wall, and along that wall came racing men armed with matchlocks, spears, and swords, yelling defiance and prepared, apparently, to attack. The worst of it was there was no turning that litter round. They halted, and the gate ahead of them opened, and right in the centre of the gate- way was an ancient cannon with a man standing beside it with a lighted rope in his hand. Turn the litter and get away in a hurry they could not. Leave it they could not. There was seemingly no escape for them. It only wanted one of those excited men to shout "Ta, Ta," and the match A WALLED CITY 209 would have been applied, and the ancient gun would have swept the pathway. Then the leader of the band of foreigners stepped forward. He flung away his rifle, he flung away his revolver, he flung away his knife, and he stood there before them defence- less, with his arms raised — modern civilisation bowing for the moment before the force of Babylon. It was a moment of supreme anxiety. Suppose the people misunderstood his actions. "We scarcely dared breathe," said the story- teller. Every heart stood still. And then they understood. The man with the lighted rope dropped it, and they beckoned to the strangers to come inside the gates. It required a good deal of courage to go inside those gates, to put themselves in the power of the Elder Brother Society, and they spent an anxious night. The town had been sacked, the streets ran blood, the men were slain, their bodies were in the streets for the crows and the wonks to feed on, and the women — well women never count for much in China in times of peace, and in war they are the spoil of the victor — the Goddess of Mercy was forgotten those days in I Chiin. All night long the anxious little party kept watch and ward, and when day dawned were thankful to be allowed to proceed on their way unmolested, eventually reaching Hsi An Fu and rescuing all the missionaries who wished to be rescued. " It was exciting," said my friend, half apologising for getting excited over it. " It was the last of old China. Such things will never happen again." Exciting! it thrilled me to hear him talk, to know such things had happened barely a year before, to o 210 A WOMAN IN CHINA know they had happened in this country. Would they never happen again ? I was not so sure of that as I went through walled town after walled town, as I looked up at the walls of Tsung Hua Chou. This was the correct setting. To talk in friendly, commonplace fashion to people who lived in such towns seemed to annihilate time, to bring the past nearer to me, to make me understand, as I had never understood before, that the people who had lived, and suffered, and triumphed, or lived, and suffered, and fallen, were almost exactly the same flesh and blood as I was myself. Back at the inn my friend the landlady brought me her little grandson to admire. He was a jolly little unwashed chap with a shaven head, clad in an unwashed shift, and I think I admired him to her heart's content. It was evidently worth having been born and lived all the strenuous weary days of her hard life to have had part in the bringing into the world of that grandson. His little sister in the blue- cornered handkerchief, looking on, did not count for much, and yet she had her own feelings, for when I clambered into my cart and was just rumbling over the step I was startled by a terrified childish outcry. Looking back, I saw that a little serving-maid, a slave probably, was running after my cart with the small son and heir in her arms, making believe to give away the household treasure to the foreign woman, with grandmother and subor- dinates looking smilingly on. Only the little sister, who was not in the secret, was shrieking lustily in protest. I had been thinking of the cities in the plain of Mesopotamia! And this carried me back to the A WALLED CITY 211 days of my own childhood and the hills round Ballarat! Many and many a time in my young days have I seen the household baby offered to the "vegetable John," and the small brothers and sisters shrieking a terrified protest. " They would be good, and love baby, and never be cross with him any more." Here was I taking the place of the smiling, bland, John Chinaman of my childhood. After all human nature is much the same all the world over, on the sunny hills of Ballarat, or in a walled city at the foot of the mountains in Northern China. If we could but bridge the gulf that lies between, I expect we should have found it just exactly the same on the banks of the Euphrates and beneath the walls of Babylon. CHAPTER XII THE NlfrE DRAGON TEMPLE The crossing of the Lanho — A dust storm — Dangers of a mew inin — Locked in — Holy mountain — Ruined city — My inter- preter— A steep hill — The barren woman — Unappetising food — The abbot — The beggar — Burning incense — The beauty of the way. WE were fairly in the mountains when we left Tsung Hua Chou. As we crawled along slowly, and I trust with dignity, though dignity is not my strong point, I looked up to the hills that towered above us, almost perpendicular they seemed in places, as if the slope had been shorn off roughly with a blunt knife, and I saw that one of these crags, that must have been about a thousand feet above the valley bottom, anyhow it looked it in the afternoon sun- light, was crowned by buildings ; and not feeling energetic, nobody does feel energetic who rides for long in a Peking cart, I thanked my stars that I had not to go up there. I thought if it were the most beautiful temple in the world I would not go up that mountain to visit it. Which only shows that I did not reckon on my Chinese servant. There may be people who can cope single-handed with the will of a Chinaman. I can't. I know now that if my servant expresses a desire for a thing, he will only ask, of course, for what is perfectly correct and good 212 A TEMPLE SET IN THE TREES. (See page 307) CROSSING THE LANHO. (See page 213) THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 213 for his Missie, he will have it in the end, so it is no good struggling ; it is better to give in gracefully at first. As we neared a river, the Lanho, or I suppose I should say the Lan, for " ho " means a river, the clouds began to gather for the first time since I had set out on my journey, and it seemed as if it were going to rain. " Must make haste," said Tuan looking up at the grey sky with the clouds scurrying across it, and making haste in a Peking cart is a painful process. By the time we arrived at the river-banks it was blowing furiously, and a good part of the country, as always seems to be the case in China when the wind blows, was in the air. The river, wide and muddy and rather shallow, was flowing swiftly along, and the crossing-place was just where the valley was widest, and there was a large extent of sand on either bank, so there was plenty of material for the wind to play with. It used it as if it had never had a chance before and was bound to make the most of it. There were many other people on that sandy beach, there were other Peking carts, there were laden country carts with their heavily studded wheels cut out of one piece of wood, looking like the wheels Mr Reed puts on his prehistoric carts in Punch, there were laden donkeys and mules, there were all the blue-clad people in charge of the traffic, and there were tiny restaurants, rough-looking shacks where the refreshment of these people was provided for. They weren't refreshing when I arrived, the wind was blowing things away piecemeal, and every man seemed to be grabbing something portable, or putting it down with a stone upon it to anchor it. 214 A WOMAN IN CHINA " Must make haste," said Tuan again, as he helped me out of the cart, and the wind got under my coat, tore at my veil, and succeeded in pulling down some of my hair. We had got beyond the region of bridges, I suppose in the summer the floods come down and sweep them away, and everybody was crossing on a wupan, a long, shallow, ffat-bottomed boat that had been decked in the middle to allow of carts being taken across. The mules were taken out, and the carts with the help of every available man about, except the fat restaurant-keeper, were got on the boat. " Must make haste," repeated Tuan, distributing with a liberal hand my hard-earned cents. I used to think a cent or two in China didn't matter, but I know by bitter experience they mount up. And then just as we were all ready, my leading mule, a fawn-coloured animal of some character, expressed his disapproval of the mode of transit by a violent kick, and broke away. The dust was blowing in heavy clouds, but every now and then I could see through the veil a dozen people racing after him, while he kicked up his heels in derision, and in a fashion of which I should not have thought any beast that had brought a Peking cart so far over such roads was capable. Then a brilliant idea occurred to the younger "cartee man." He decided to mount the white mule that led the other cart. This was a meek-looking beast who I pre- sume always did exactly as he was told ; but a worm will turn, and to be ridden after all the long journey was more than even he would stand. With a buck and a kick he got rid of the "cartee man," and then THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 215 there were two mules careering about in the wild dust storm. It looked highly probable that they would take advantage of their liberty to go back to Peking, and I crossed that river wondering very much how I was to get any farther on my journey, and whether lost mules were a part of the just expenditure expected of a foreign woman. After about two hours, how- ever, they were brought in, the fawn-coloured mule as perky as ever, but the white one so depressed by his only taste of freedom that he never recovered as long as I had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Before we were on our way again the dust storm had subsided, and I was shaking the mountains, or the Gobi Desert, or whatever it was, out of the folds of my clothes and out of my hair and eyes, and Tuan was once more urgent. " Must make haste.55 But it was no good, we had lost too much time, we could not possibly reach the little town we had planned to reach, and before the sun set we turned into the yard of a little hostelry in a small mountain hamlet underneath the holy mountain that was crowned with the temple I had been looking at all the afternoon. And then to my joy I found that this place was clean, actually clean!! Two notes of exclamation do not do proper justice to it. The yard bore little traces of occupation, the room I was shown into had a new blue calico curtain at the door, it was freshly whitewashed, a clean mat was on the k5ang, the wood that edged it was new, and there was clean tissue paper over the lattice-work of the windows. The floor, of course, was only hard, beaten earth, but that did not matter. I would sit on the k'ang, and 216 A WOMAN IN CHINA besides this place smelt of nothing but whitewash. I rejoiced exceedingly as I had the paper torn off the top of the window to let in the fresh air, but Tuan looked at it from another point of view. " Must take care," said he, " this new inn. ' Cartee man ' no know she. Must take care," and he looked so grave that I wondered what on earth was the penalty I ran the risk of paying for cleanliness. They evidently were afraid, for all the luggage, which as a rule stayed strapped on the carts in the inn yard, was taken off and brojught in. I was worth robbing, for I had about seven-and-twenty pounds in dollars in my black box, and that, judging by what I saw, would have bought up all the villages between Jehol and Peking. However, it was no good worrying about it, however agitated Tuan might be. Besides, anyhow he was some- thing of a coward, all Chinese servants are, it seems to me. His fear didn't seem to last very long, for pres- ently he came bustling in, all excitement. I was brushing my hair to try and get some of the dust out of it, and reflecting there was possibly some reason in so many Chinese women being bald. It must be much easier to keep a hairless head free from dust. " Missie, Missie, innkeeper man, she say my Missie come in good time. Nine Dragon Temple," he pointed upwards, and I knew with a sinking heart he meant the one I had watched all day and decided that to it I would not go, "open one time for ten day, never in year open any more," and he looked at me to see his words sink in. They sank in right THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 217 enough. I knew I was going there, but still I protested. " I cannot walk up that mountain." " No walk, Missie no walk, can get chair." Still I struggled. " It will cost too much money." " Three dollars, Missie, can do. Not spend much monies," and he looked at me as much as to say I would never let three dollars, about six shillings, stand between me and a wonder that was only open for ten days in the year, especially when I had arrived on the auspicious day. " But what will you do, Tuan, I really cannot afford a chair for you," for I knew my follower on every occasion, even when I should have walked made a point of riding. He looked at me, but I suppose he saw I had reached the limit of my for- bearance. His chest swelled out virtuously. " I strong young man, I walk." I made another effort. u But the bottom of the mountain is a good way off, how shall I get there ? " " I talkee ' cartee man/ he takee Missie two dollars." It was mounting up. I knew it would. " But who will look after our things here ? " "One piecey 'cartee man' stop," said he airily. So it was all arranged and I was booked for the Nine Dragon Temple whether I liked it or not. Then there was the night to consider in this new inn, the safety of which Tuan had doubted. In my room were all my possessions, including the black box with the money in it, and I looked at the door and saw to my dismay that there was no fastening on the inside. " I take care Missie," said Tuan loftily, and then 218 A WOMAN IN CHINA proceeded to instruct me in the precautions he had taken. " Innkeeper man ask how long Missie stay and I say pVaps five day, p'r'aps ten day. No tell true." No tell true indeed, lor I had every intention of leaving next day even if I did have to go up to the mountain temple in the morning. Again I looked at the rough planks of the door coming down to the earthen floor, and decided I would draw my heavy box across it, and I said so to Tuan. But he was emphatic, " I take care Missie," I wonder if he would have done so had there really been any danger. Then he bid me good night and, going outj drew the door to after him and proceeded to lock it on the outside ! I presume he put the key in his pocket. Some papers have honoured me by referring to me as a " distinguished traveller," and I have had hopes of being elected to the Royal Geographical Society! For a moment I thought of calling him back indignantly, and then I thought better of it. "A man thinks he knows," says the Chinese proverb, " but a woman knows better." The window was frail and all across the room, and I knew I could break the lattice-work if I wanted to, so could the thief for that matter, so I slept peace- fully, the sleep of the utterly weary, and the inn- keeper proved an honest man after all. And next day, after breakfast, just as the sun was rising, I started for the Nine Dragon Temple, The peak which it crowned stood out from the rest like a very acute triangle. They say the camera cannot lie, I only know I did not succeed in getting a photo- graph of that mountain that gave any idea of its THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 219 steepness. Its slopes, faintly tinged with green and dotted with fir-trees, fell away like the sides of a house from the narrow top that was crowned with buildings. It was just one of the many holy moun- tains that are scattered over China^ and it seemed to me, looking up, that nothing but a bird could reach it. But still I had to try. All the country was bathed in the golden rays of the sun as I climbed into the cart, and we made our way through a ruined city that must once have been very rich and pros- perous. Only the poorest of the poor apparently lived among the ruins, and we went through a ruined gateway where no man watched now, and over half- tilled fields, to the supplementary temple at the bottom of the mountain. Here Tuan blossomed forth wonderfully. Up till now he had only been my servant, a most impor- tant servant but still a servant, now he became, on a sudden, that much more important functionary, my interpreter. A solemn old gentleman in a dark-coloured robe with a shaven head received me with that perfect courtesy which it is my experience these monks always show, escorted me into a large room with a k'ang on one side and a figure of a god, large and gorgeous, facing the door. He asked me my age, as apparently the most important question he could ask — it is rather an important factor in one's life — and then when I was seated on the k'ang, with my interpreter, in his very best clothes of silk brocade, on the other, a variety of cakes in little dishes were set on the k'ang table beside me, and a small shaven- headed little boy who I was informed was called " Trees " was set to pour out tea as long as I would 220 A WOMAN IN CHINA drink it. I was so amused at the importance of Tuan. Not for worlds would I have given him away as he sat there sipping tea and nibbling at a piece of cake ; and I wonder still what he thought I thought. Did he fear I should call him to account for sitting down as if he were on terms of equality with me? Did he think I was a fool, or was he properly grate- ful that I allowed him this little latitude? At any rate, except in the matter of squeeze, he always served me very well indeed, and there is no doubt my dignity was enhanced by going about with a real, live interpreter. The priest could not know what a very inadequate one he was. Presently they came and announced that the chair was ready. " Put on new ropes," announced my interpreter pointing out the lashings to me. The chair was fastened to a couple of stout poles and four coolies, they might have been own brothers to the ones I had at the Ming Tombs, lifted it to their shoulders and we were off. All the people who dwelt in the little hamlet that clustered round the temple at the foot of the mountain, hoary-headed old men, little, naked children, small-footed women, peeped out and looked at the foreign woman as she passed on her pilgrimage up the steep and narrow pathway, the first foreigner that had passed up this way for some years, and probably the only one who would pass up this year. It took a good many people to get me up, I noticed, it wouldn't have been Tuan if it hadn't. There was his all-important self of course, there was a man carrying my camera, another one carrying my umbrella and a bundle of incense sticks, there were various minor hangers-on in the shape of THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 221 small boys, and there were, of course, my four chair coolies. A Chinese chair is a most uncomfortable thing anyway, and this had exaggerated the faults of its kind. Always it is so built that there is not seat enough, while the back seems specially arranged to pitch the unlucky occupant forward. It is bad enough in the ordinary way — going up a mountain, and a very steep mountain, it is anathema, and coming down it is beyond words. And this mountain was steep, its looks had not belied it ; never have I gone up such a steep place before, never, I devoutly hope, shall I go up such a steep place again. The moun- tain fell away, and I looked out into space on either side. I could see hills, of course, away in the far distance, with a greaT gulf between me and them, rounded, treeless hills with just a faint touch of green upon them, and the trees on my own mountain, firs and pines with an occasional poplar, green and fresh with the tender green of Maytime, stood up at an acute angle with the hill-side above, and an obtuse angle below. The air was fresh, and keen, and in- vigorating, and in the green grass grew bulbs like purple crocuses, wild jessamine sweetly scented, and delicate blue wild hyacinths, that in Staffordshire they call blue bells. I remember once in a delight- ful wood in the Duke of Sutherland's grounds near Stoke-on-Trent, that most sordid town of the Black Country, seeing the ground there carpeted with just such blossoms as I saw here on the holy mountain in China. Up we went and up. There were stone steps put together without mortar, all the way, and there were platforms every here and there, where the weary 222 A WOMAN IN CHINA might rest, and because the hill was so steep, these platforms were generally made by piling up stones that looked as if a touch would send them rolling to the bottom of the mountain, a step and one would be over oneself, for there were no barriers. It was twelve li, four miles up, and the way was broken by smaller temples dedicated to various gods, among them one to the goddess who takes pity on barren women. This one was half-way up the mountain, and here we met a small-footed woman toiling along with the aid of a stick. Half-way up that cruel mountain she had crawled on her aching feet, and every day she would come up, she told us, to burn incense at the shrine. And she looked old, old. It would be a miracle indeed, I thought, if she bore that longed-for child. Hope must be dying very hard indeed. And yet she must have known. Poor thing, poor weary woman, what was the tragedy of her life? Children, one would think, were a drug in the market in China, they swarm everywhere. I burned an incense stick for her and could only hope the God of Pity would answer her prayer, and take away her reproach before men. Up and up and up, and so steep it grew I was fain to shut my eyes else the sensation that I would fall off into space would have been too much for me. From the doorways of the wayside temples we passed through we looked into space, and the mountains at the other side of the valley seemed farther away than ever. A cuckoo called and called again " Cuckoo ! Cuckoo ! " As we waited once a coolie passed with a bamboo across his shoulder from which were slung two very modern kerosene tins — Babylon and America meeting — and they told me there was no THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 223 water on the mountain, every drop had to be carried up; and then the men took up the poles on their shoulders and tramped on again, and every time they changed the pole from one shoulder to the other I felt I would surely fall off into the valley, miles below. Up and up and up, they were stream- ing with perspiration, and at last when it seemed to me we had arrived at the highest point of the world, and that it was very like a needle-point, they set down my chair at the bottom of the flight of steps that led up to the entrance to the main temple, and the abbot and a crowd of monks stood at the top to greet me. They swarmed everywhere, it was impossible to estimate their numbers, young men and old, all with shaven heads and dark, rusty red robes, and then others, blind, and halt, and maimed, evidently pen- sioners on their bounty. It seemed to me it could hardly be worth while to climb up so steep a place for the small dole that was all the monks had it in their power to give. It must have been so little, so little. They showed me the shrine, a poor little shrine to one who had seen the wonders of the Lama Temple in Peking. I took a picture of the abbot standing in front of it, and they showed me their kitchen premises, where were great jars of vegetables salted and in pickle, and looking most unappetising, but that apparently, with millet porridge, was all they had to live on. It was crowded, it was dirty, it was shabby, but there were great stone pillars, eighteen of them, that they told me had been brought from a great distance south of Peking, and had been carried up the moun- tain in the days of the Mings, long before there were 224 A WOMAN IN CHINA the steps, which were only put there a little over a hundred years ago — quite recently for China. How they could possibly get them up even now that there are four miles of steep stone steps I cannot possibly imagine. Babylon ! Babylon ! ! I shut my eyes and saw the toiling slaves, heard the crack of the taskmaster's whip, and the hopeless moan of the man who sank, crushed and broken, beneath the burden. The abbot bowed himself courteously over a gift of thirty cents which Tuan, and I am sure he would not have understated it, said was the proper cum- sHftw, and I bade them farewell and turned to go down that hill again. The thought of it was heavy on my soul. Outside was a beggar, men are close to starvation in China. The wretched, forlorn creature, with wild hair and his nakedness hidden by the most disgusting rags, had followed my train up all those four steep miles in the hope of a small gift. For five cents he too bowed himself in deepest gratitude. It was a gift I was ashamed of, but the important interpreter considered he had the right to regulate these things, and he certainly led me care- fully on all other occasions. Then I looked at my chair and I looked at the steep steps down which we must go. How could I possibly manage it without getting giddy and pitching right forward, for going down would be much worse than coming up had been. And then the men showed me that I must get in and be carried down backwards. Would they slip? I could but trust not. I was alone and helpless, days, and they must have known it, from any of my own people. They might easily have held me up and demanded more than the three dollars for which they had contracted, but they did THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 225 not. Patient, uncomplaining, as the Babylonish slaves to whom I had compared them, they carried me steadily and carefully from temple to temple all the way down, and at every altar we stopped I sat and looked on, and Tuan burned incense sticks, the officiating priest, he was very poor, dirty and shabby, struck a melodious gong as the act of adoration was accomplished and Tuan, in all his best clothes, knelt and knocked his head on the ground. I wondered whether I, too, was not acquiring merit, for my money had bought the incense sticks, and my money, it was only a trifling ten cents, paid the wild-looking individual, with torn coat and unshaven head, who carried them up the mountain. Oh, but I had something — something that I cannot put into words — for my pains ; the something that made the men of five hundred years before build the temple on the mountain top to the glory of God, my God and their God, by whatever Name you choose to call Him. It was good to sit there looking away at the distant vista, at the golden sunlight on the trees and grass2 at the shadows that were creep- ing in between, to smell the sensuous smell of the jessamine, and if I could not help thinking of all I had lost in life, of the fate that had sent me here to the Nine Dragon Temple, at least I could count among my gains the beauty that lay before my eyes. And when I reached the bottom of the mountain in safety, I felt I had gained merit, for the men who had carried me so carefully were wild with gratitude, and evidently called down blessings upon my head, because I gave them an extra dollar. It pleased me, and yet saddened me, because it seemed an awful thing that twenty-five cents apiece, sixpence p 226 A WOMAN IN CHINA each, should mean so much to any man. Their legs ached, they said. Poor things, poor things. Many legs ache in China, and I am afraid more often than not there is no one to supply a salve. So we came back to the little mountain inn in the glorious afternoon, and the people looked on us as those who had made a pilgrimage, and Tuan climbed a little way down from his high estate. He set about getting me a meal, the eternal chicken, and rice, and stewed pear, and I looked back at the mountain I had climbed and wondered, and was glad, as I am often glad, that I had done a thing I need never do again. Was there merit? For Tuan, let us hope, even though I did pay for the incense sticks, for me, well I don't know. On the mountain I was uplifted, here in the valley I only knew that the view from the high peak, the vista of hill and valley, the green- ness of the fresh grass on the rounded, treeless hills, and the greenness of the springing crops in the valley, the golden sunshine and the glorious blue sky of Northern China, the sky that is translucent and far away, was something well worth remember- ing. Truly it sometimes seems that all things that are worth doing are hard to do. CHAPTER XIII IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS Etiquette of the Chinese cart — Ruined city— The building of the wall— The advice of a mule — A catastrophe — The failing of the Peking cart — Beautiful scenery — Industrious people — The posters of the mountains — Inn yards — The heads of the people — Mountain dogs — Wolves — A slum people — Artistic hands— " Cavalry "—The last pass. AND now we were on the very borders of China proper. The road was simply awful, very often just following the path of a mountain torrent. Always my cart went first, and however convenient it sometimes seemed for the other cart to take first place, it never did so. Suppose we turned down a narrow path between high banks and found we were wrong and had to go back, the second cart would make the most desperate effort and get up the bank rather than go before me. Such is Chinese etiquette, and like most rules and customs when one inquires into the reason of them, there is some sense at the bottom of it. A Chinese road is as a rule terribly dusty and the second cart gets full benefit of all the dust stirred up. The day after we had been to the Nine Dragon Temple we passed through the Great Wall at Hsing Feng K'ou, another little walled city. We had spent the night just outside the ruined wall of an old city, a city that was nearly deserted. There were 227 228 A WOMAN IN CHINA the old gateways and an old bell tower, even an old cannon lying by the gate, but more than half the people were gone, and those who remained were evidently poor peasants, living there I should say because building material was cheap, and eking out the precarious existence of the poor peasant all over China. The hills were very close down now and the valleys very narrow, and on a high peak close to the crumbling walls was the remains of a beacon tower. Here by the border they had need to keep sharp watch and ward. I suppose they have nothing to fear now, or perhaps there is nothing to take, but in one ruined gateway I passed through they were tending swine, and in another they were growing melons. At least it would never be worth the raiders while to gather and carry away the insipid melon of China. The Wall is always wonderful. It was wonderful here even in its decay. The country looked as if some great giant had upheaved it in great flat slabs, raising what had been horizontal almost into the perpendicular. It would have been impossible I should have thought for any man, let alone an invading army, to cross there ; there were steep grassy slopes on one side, on the other the precipice was rough and impassable, and yet, on the very top of the ridge, ran the wall, broken and falling into decay in some places. I do not wonder that it has not been kept in repair, what I wonder is that it was ever built. Tradition says they loaded goats with the material and drove them to the top of the hills, but it seems to me more likely they were carried by slaves. All the strenuous past lived for me again as the sunlight touched the tops of the watch- THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 229 towers and I saw how carefully they were placed to command a valley. And that life is past and gone, the Manchus have conquered and passed away, and the Mongols — well the Mongols they say, when they come in contact with the Chinese, always beat them, and yet it is the Chinese who, pushing out beyond the Wall, settle on and till the rich Mongol pasture lands. There is now no need of the Wall, for the Chinese, the timid Chinese have gone beyond it. Inner Mongolia they call this country beyond the Wall, and worse and worse got the road, sometimes it was between high banks, sometimes on a ledge of the hills, sometimes it followed the course of a mountain torrent, but always the general direction was the same, across or along a valley to steep and rugged hills, hills sterile, stony, and forbidding, and through which there seemed no possible way. There was always a way to the valley beyond, but after we passed the Wall I considered it possible only for a Peking cart, and by and by I came to think it was only by supreme good luck that a Peking cart came through. There was a big brown mule in the shafts of my cart, and the fawn mule led, so far away that I wondered more than once whether he had anything to do with the traction at all, or whether it was only his advice that was needed. He was a wise mule, and when he came to a jumping-off place, with apparently nothing beyond it, he used to pause and look round as much as to say: "Jeewhicks!" you couldn't expect much refine- ment from a Chinese mule, "this is tall No can do." 230 A WOMAN IN CHINA The carter would jump down from his place on the tail of the shaft. He would make a few remarks in Chinese, which, I presume, freely translated were: " Not do that place ? What're yer givin' us ? Do it on me Jed." Then the fawn-coloured mule would return to his work with a whisk of his tail which said plainly as words : " Oh all serene. You say can do. Well, I ain't in the cart, I ain't even drawing the cart, and I ain't particular pals with the gentleman in the shafts, so here goes." And the result justified the opinion of both. We did get down, but it seemed to me a mighty narrow squeak, and I was breathless at the thought that the experience must be repeated in the course of the next hour or so. At first I was so terrified I decided I would walk, then I found it took me so long — one mountain pass finished off a pair of boots — and there were so many of them I decided I had better put my faith in the mules if I did not wish to delay the outfit and arrive at Jehol barefoot. But I never went up and down those passes without bated breath and a vow that never, never again would I trust myself in the mountains in a Peking cart. Still I grew to have infinite faith in the Peking cart. I was bruised and sore all over, and I found the new nightgowns and chemises in my box were worn into holes with the jolting, but I believed a Peking cart could go anywhere, and then my confidence received a rude shock. We came to a stony place, steep and stony enough in all conscience, but as nothing to some of THROUGH THE GREAT WALL INTO INNER MONGOLIA, PEKING CART UPSET. THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 231 the places we had passed over, where there had been a precipice on one side and a steep cliff on the other, and where to go over would certainly have spelled grave disaster, but here there was a bank at either side and the fawn-coloured mule never even looked round before negotiating it. Up, up went one side of the cart, but I was accustomed to that by this time, up, up, the angle grew perilous, and then over we went, and I was in the tilt of the cart, almost on my head, and the brown mule in the shafts seemed trying to get into the cart backwards. I didn't see how he could, but I have unlimited faith in the powers of a Chinese mule, so, amidst wild yells from Tuan and the carters, I was out on to the hill- side before I had time to think, and presently was watching those mules make hay of my possessions. They didn't leave a single thing either in or on that cart, camera, typewriter, cushions, dressing-bag, bed- ding, all shot out on to what the Chinaman is pleased to consider the road, even the heavy box, roped on behind, got loose and fell off, and the mule justified my expectations by, in some mysterious way, break- ing the woodwork at the top of the cart and tearing all the blue tilt away. It took us over an hour to get things right again, and my faith in the stability of a Peking cart was gone for ever. We were right in the very heart of the mountains now, and the scenery was magnificent, close at hand hills, sterile and stony, and behind them range after range of other blue hills fading away into the bluer distance. Day after day I looked upon a scene that would be magnificent in any land, and here in China filled me with wonder. Could this be China, practical, prosaic China, China of the ages, 232 A WOMAN IN CHINA this beautiful land? And always above me was the blue sky, always the golden sunshine and the invigorating, dry air that reminded me, as I have never before been reminded, of Australia. But, however desolate and sterile the hills, and they seldom had more than an occasional fir-tree upon them, in the valleys were always people and evidences of their handiwork in the shape of wonder- fully tilled fields. There are no fences, the China- man does not waste his precious ground in fences, but between the carefully driven furrows there is never a weed, and all day long the people are engaged turning over the ground so that it will not cake, and may benefit by every drop of moisture that may be extracted from the atmosphere. A little snow in the winter, a shower or two in April, and the summer rains in July or August, are all this fruitful land requires for a bountiful harvest, but I am bound to say it is fruitful only because of the intense care that is given to it. No one surely but a Chinese peasant would work as these people work. In every valley bottom there is, according to its size, a town, perhaps built of stones with thatched roofs, a small hamlet, or at least a farm- house, enclosed either behind a neat mud wall or a more picturesque one of the yellow stalks of the kaoliang. And the people are everywhere, in the very loneliest places far up on the hills I would see a spot of blue herding black goats or swine, and on parts of the road far away from any habitation, when I began to think I had really got beyond even the ubiquitous Chinaman, we would meet a forlorn, ragged figure, an old man past other work or a small boy with a bamboo across his shoulders and slung THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 233 from it two dirty baskets. With scoop in hand he was gathering the droppings of the animals with which to make argol for fuel, for enough wood is not to be had, and in this respect so industrious are the Chinese that their roads are really the cleanest I have ever seen. There were strangely enough here, in the heart of the mountains, signs of foreign enterprise, for however desolate the place might seem, sooner or later we were sure to come across the advertisements of the British American Tobacco Company. There they would be in a row great placards advertising Rooster Cigarettes, or Peacock Cigarettes or Purple Mountain Cigarettes, half a dozen pictures, and then one upside down to attract attention. I never saw the men who put them there, and I hate the blatant advertisement that spoils the scenery as a rule. Here I greeted them with a distinct thrill of pleasure. Here were men of my race and colour, doing pioneering work in the out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and I metaphorically made them a curtsy and wished them well, for no one knows better than I do the lonely lives they lead. But they are bringing China in touch with the outside world. By and by we came to a place where carts were not seen, the people were wiser than I, but there was a constant stream of laden mules and donkeys bringing grain inside the wall. Long before I could see them I could hear the jingling of the collar of bells most of them wore, and in an inn yard we always met the train and saw them start out before us in the morning, though we were early enough, I saw to that, often have I had my breakfast before five o'clock, or coming in after we did in the 234 A WOMAN IN CHINA dusk of the evening. I objected to travelling in the dusk. I felt the roads held pitfalls enough without adding darkness to our other difficulties. The inns grew poorer and poorer as we got deeper into the mountains but always I found in those inn yards something interesting to look at. By night I was too weary to do anything but go to bed, but I generally had my tiffin in a shady spot in a corner of the yard and watched all that was going on. The yard would be crowded with animals, mules, and donkeys, and always there were people coming and going, who thought the foreign woman was a sight not to be missed. There have been missionaries here or in Chihli for the last hundred years, so they must have seen foreign women, but the sight cannot be a common one judging by the way they stared. There would be well-to-do Chinamen riding nice- looking donkeys, still more prosperous ones borne in litters by a couple of protesting mules, and in every corner of the yard would be beasts eating. And all these beasts of burden required numerous helpers, and the hangers-on were the most dilapid- ated specimens of humanity I have ever seen, not nearly so sure of a meal, I'm afraid, as the pigs and hens that wandered round scavenging. There would be an occasional old woman and very, very seldom a young one with large feet marking her as belonging to the very poorest class, but mostly they were men dressed in blue cotton, faded, torn, ragged, and yet patched beyond recognition. " Patch beside patch is neighbourly," says an old saw, " but patch upon patch is beggarly." The poor folks in the inn yards not only had patch upon patch, but even the last patches were torn, and they THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 235 looked far more poverty-stricken than the children who played about this pleasant weather wearing only their birthday dress. But they all had something to do. An old man whose bald head must have required little shaving and whose weedy queue was hardly worth plaiting, drew water from the well, another who had adopted the modern style of dress- ing the hair gathered up the droppings of the animals, a small boy with wild hair that no one had time to attend to, and clad in a sort of fringe of rags, drove away the hideous black sow and her numerous litter when she threatened to become a nuisance, and from earliest dawn to dark there were men cutting chaff. The point of a huge knife was fixed in the end of a wooden groove, one man pushed the fodder into its position and another lifted the knife by its wooden handle and brought it down with all his strength. Then he lifted it, and the process was repeated. I have seen men at work thus, in the morning before it was light enough to see, I have seen them at it when the dusk was falling. There do not seem to be any recognised hours for stopping work in China. And all the heads of these people were wild. If they wore a queue it was dirty and unplaited, and the shaven part of their heads had a week's growth of bristles, and if they were more modern in their hair-dressing, their wild black hair stuck out all over the place and looked as if it had originally been cut by the simple process of sticking a basin on the head and clipping all the hairs that stood out round it. But untidy heads of hair are not peculiar to the inn yard, they are common enough wherever I have been in China. There were always innumerable children in the yard, too, with heads 236 A WOMAN IN CHINA shaven all but little tails of hair here and there, which, being plaited stiffly, stood out like the head- gear of a clown, and there were cart men and donkey men, just peasants in blue, with their blouses girt round their waists. There were the guests, too, petticoated Chinese gentlemen, squires, or merchants, or well-to-do farmers, standing in the doorways looking on, and occasionally ladies, dressed in the gayest colours, with their faces powdered and painted, peeped shyly out, half secretively, as if they were ashamed, but felt they must take one look at the foreign woman who walked about as if she were not ashamed of the open day- light, and was quite capable of managing for herself. Sometimes I was taken to the women's quarters, where the women-folk of the innkeeper dwelt, and there, seated on a k'ang, in a room that had never been aired since it was built, I would find feminine things of all ages, from the half-grown girl, who in England would have been playing hockey, to the old great grandmother who was nursing the cat. They always offered me tea, and I always took it, and they always examined my dress, scornfully I am afraid, because it was only of cotton, and wanted to lay their fingers in the waves of my hair, only I drew the line at those dirty hands coming close to my face. At first it all seemed strange, but in a day I felt as if I had been staying in just such inns all my life. The farther one wanders I find the sooner does novelty wear off. As a little girl, to go fifty miles from my home and to have my meals off a different- patterned china gave me a delightful sense of novelty, and to sleep in a strange bed kept me awake all night. Now in an hour — oh far less — nothing INN YARD LITTER WITH MULES WAITING TO BE LOADED. INN YARD IN THE MOUNTAINS MY CARTS. THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 287 feels new, not even the courtyard of a Chinese mountain inn. I have never seen so many people with goitres. The missionaries at Jehol told me it was very much dreaded, and that the people brought the affliction upon themselves by flying into violent passions. I doubt very much whether that is the origin of the goitre ; but that it is very much dreaded, I can quite believe. For not only does a goitre look most un- sightly, but the unfortunate possessor must always keep his head very straight, for if he lets it drop for- ward, even for a moment, he closes the air passages, and is in danger of suffocating. I have heard it is brought on by something in the water. Water, of course, I never dared drink in China. I saw very pleasant, clear-looking, liquid drawn up from the wells in those inn courtyards in closely plaited buckets of basket-work, but I never ventured upon it. I always remembered Aunt Eliza : " In the drinking well Which the plumber built her, Aunt Eliza fell. We must buy a filter." Aunt Eliza's cheerful, if somewhat callous, legatees had some place where they could buy a filter, I had not, besides, I am sure, all the filters in the world could not make safe water drawn from a well in a Chinese inn yard, so I drank tea, which necessitates the water being boiled. The Chinese build their wells with the expectation of someone, not necessarily Aunt Eliza, coming to grief in them. On one occasion a man of my acquaintance was ordering a well to be made in his yard, and he instructed the well-sinker that he need 238 A WOMAN IN CHINA not make it, as the majority of Chinese wells are made, much wider at the bottom than at the top. But the workman shook his head. He must make it, he said, wide enough at the bottom for a man — or woman, they are the greatest offenders — to turn round if he flung himself in. He might change his mind and want to get out again, and if a body were found in a well not roomy enough to allow of this change of mind, he, the builder, would be tried for murder. This thoughtful consideration for the would-be suicide, who might wish to repent, is truly Chinese. Personally I doubt very much whether anyone would take the trouble to investigate the bottom of a well. There might easily be something very much worse than Aunt Eliza in it. Presumably she was a well- to-do, and therefore a clean old lady, while the frequenters of those yards were beyond description. The people in the little towns, and more especially those in the lonely farm-houses which looked so neat and well-kept in contrast with the ragged, dirty objects that came out of them, kept a most hand- some breed of dogs. Sometimes they were black and white, or grey, but more often they were a beautiful tawny colour. They were, apparently, of the same breed as the wonks that infest all Chinese towns, but there was the same difference between these dogs and the wonks as there is between a miserable, mangy mongrel and the pampered beast that takes first prize at a great show. Indeed, I should like to see these great mountain dogs at a show, I imagine they would be hard to beat. They looked very fierce, whether they are or not I don't know, because I always gave them a wide berth, and THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 289 Tuan, the cautious, always shook his head when one came too close, called to someone else with a stick to drive it away, and murmured his usual formula : " Must take care." They told me there were wolves among these mountains, and I can quite believe it, though I never saw one. In the dead of winter they are fierce and dangerous, and much dreaded. They come into the villages, steal the helpless children, will make a snap at a man in pass- ing and inflict terrible wounds. A Chinaman will go to sleep in all sorts of uncomfortable spots, and more than one has been wakened by having half the side of his face torn away. Of such a wound as this the man generally dies, but so many are seen who have so suffered, and gruesome sights they are, that the wolves must be fairly numerous and exceed- ingly bold. They take the children, too, long before the winter has come upon the land. There was a well-loved child, most precious, the only son of the only son, and his parents and grandparents being busy harvesting they left him at home playing happily about the threshold. When they came back, after a short absence, they found he had been so terribly mauled by a wolf that shortly after he died, and the home was desolate. And yet these wolves are very difficult to shoot. " I have never seen one," a man told me. " Again and again, when I was in the mountains, the villagers would come complaining of the depreda- tions of a wolf. I could see for myself the results of his visit, but never, never have I found the wolf. It seems as if they must smell a gun." When first I heard of the wolves I laughed. I was so sure no beast of prey could live alongside 240 A WOMAN IN CHINA a Chinaman, the Chinaman would want to eat him. " They would if they could catch him," said my friend, " but they can't, though the majority of the population are on the look-out for him. There is nothing of the hunter about the Chinaman." " Meat! " said a wretched farmer once, rubbing his stomach, when the missionaries fed him during a famine. He couldn't remember when he had tasted meat, and not in his most prosperous year had he had such a feast as his saviours had given him then. "How much do you make a year?" asked the missionary. He thought a little and then he said that, in a good year, he perhaps made twelve dollars, but then, of course, all years were not good years. But we, on our part, must remember that these people belong to another age, and that the purchasing power of the dollar for their wants is greater than it is with us. Very, very lonely it seems to me must these mountain villages be when the frost of winter holds the hills in its grip, very shut out from the world were they now in the early summer, and very little could they know of the life that goes on within the Wall, let alone in other lands. Indeed there are no other lands for the Chinese of this class, this is his country, and this suffices for him, everybody else is in outer barbarism. Steeper and steeper grew the hills, more and more toilsome the way, and the people, when we stopped, looked more and more wonderingly at the stranger. At one place, where I had tiffin, I shared the room and the k'ang, the sun was so hot and there was no shade, so I could not stay outside, with six women THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 241 of all ages, two had babies that had never been washed, two had hideous goitres, and all had their hair gathered into long curved horns at the back. There was also on the floor, a promising litter of little pigs, and three industrious hens. The women's blue coats were old, torn, patched, soiled, and yet — oh the pity of it, these women, who had to work hard for their living, work in the fields probably, had their feet bound. One had not, but all the rest were maimed. Two of them had their throats all bruised, and I wondered if they had been trying to hang them- selves as a means of getting away from a life that had no joy in it, but I afterwards found that with two coins, or anything else that will serve the purpose, coins are probably rather scarce, they pinch up the flesh and produce these bruises as a counter-irritant, and, ugly as it looks, it is often very effective. These should have been country people, if ever any people belonged to the country, and then, as I looked at them, the truth dawned on me. There are no country people in the China I have seen, as I from Australia know country people, the men of the bush. They — yes — here in the mountains, are a people of mean streets, a slum people, decadent, the very sediment of an age-long civilisation. I said this to a man who had lived long in China and spoke the language well, and he looked at me in surprise. "Why," he said, "they all seem to me country people. The ordinary people of the towns are just country yokels." But we meant exactly the same thing. I looked at the country people I had known all my life, the capable, resourceful pioneers, facing new conditions, Q 242 A WOMAN IN CHINA breaking new ground, ready for any emergency, the men who, if they could not found a new nation, must perish ; he was looking at the men from sleepy little country villages in the old land, men who had been left behind in the race. And so we meant exactly the same thing, though we expressed it in apparently opposing terms. These people are serfs, struggling from dawn to dark for enough to fill their stomachs, toiling along a well-worn road, without originality, bound to the past, with all the go and initiative crushed out of them. As their fathers went so must they go, the evils that their fathers suffered must they suffer, and the struggle for a bare existence is so cruelly hard, that they have no hope of improving themselves. It was all interesting, wonderful, but I do not think ever in the world have I felt so lonely. I longed with an intense longing to see someone of my own colour, to speak with someone in my own tongue. I don't know that I was exactly afraid, and yet sometimes when I saw things that I did not under- stand, I wondered what I should do if anything did happen. Considering the way some people had talked in Peking, it would have been a little surprising if I had not. Once we came upon a place where the side of the road was marked with crosses in whitewash and I wondered. I remembered the stories I had heard of the last anti-Christian outbreak, and I wondered if those crosses had anything to do with another. It all sounds very foolish now, but I remember as cross after cross came into view I was afraid, and at last I called Tuan and asked him what they meant. " Some man," said he, " give monies mend road, THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 248 puttee white so can see where mend it." And that was all ! But what that road was like before it was mended I cannot imagine! At last, after a wearying day's journey of one hundred and twenty li, or forty miles, over the roughest roads in the world, we came in the evening sunlight upon a long line of grunting, ragged camels just outside a great square gate enclosed in heavy masonry, and we were at Pa Kou, as it is spelt by the wisdom of those who have spelled Chinese, but it is pronounced Ba Go. It is a city or rather a long street, twenty li or nearly seven miles long, and the houses were packed as closely together in that street as they are in London itself. The worst of the journey, Tuan told me, was over. There was another range of mountains to cross, we had been going north, now we were to go west, it would take us two days and we would be in Jehol. And here, for the first time, the authorities took notice of me. The first inn we stopped at was dirty, and Tuan went on a tour of inspection to see if he could not find one more to his Missie's liking, and I sat in my cart and watched the crowded throng, and thought that never in my life had I been so tired — I ached in every limb. If the finding of an inn had depended on me I should simply have gone to sleep where I was. At last it was decided there was none better, and into the crowded and dirty yard we went, and I, as soon as my bed was put up, had my bath and got into it, as the only clean place there was, besides I was too tired to eat, and I thought I might as well rest. But I had been seen sitting in the street, and the Tutuh of the town, the Chief Magistrate, sent his 244 A WOMAN IN CHINA secretary to call upon the " distinguished traveller " and to ask if she, Tuan, who never could manage the pronouns, reported it as " he/' had a passport. The " distinguished traveller " apologised for being in bed and unable to see the great man's secretary, and sent her servant — I noticed he put on his best clothes, so I suppose he posed as an interpreter — to show she had a passport all in order. He came back looking very grave and very important. " She say must take care, plenty robber, must have soldier." Here was a dilemma. I had heard so much about the robbers of China, and the robbers of China are by no means pleasant gentlemen to meet. A robber band is not an uncommon thing, but is more dangerous probably, to the people of the land than to the foreigner, for here in the north the lesson of 1900 has been well rubbed in. It is a dangerous thing to tackle a foreigner. Dire is the vengeance that is exacted for his life. Still I wasn't quite com- fortable in my own mind. I thought of the mighty robber White Wolf, who ravaged Honan, of whom even the missionaries and the British American Tobacco Company are afraid. On one occasion two missionaries were hunted by his band and driven so close that, as they lay hidden under a pile of straw, a pursuer stood on the shoulder of one of them. He lay hardly daring to breathe and the robber moved away without discovering their hiding- place. Afterwards, however, they did fall into the hands of White Wolf, who, contrary to their expecta- tions, courteously fed them and set them on their way. Of course, they had nothing of which to be despoiled, and it was their good-fortune to fall into THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 245 the hands of the leader himself, who knows a little of the world, and something of the danger of attacking a foreigner. The danger had been that they might fall into the hands of his men, his ignorant followers, who, in their zeal, would probably kill them, perhaps with torture, and report to the chief later on. This happened after I had been to Jehol, but, of course, I had heard of White Wolf. I knew his country was farther to the south in the more disturbed zone, and I did not expect to meet robbers here. Still I had the Tutuh's word for it that here they were. If you are going to have any anxiety in the future, I have come to the conclusion it is just as well to be dead tired. I couldn't do anything, and I was utterly tired out. I had been in the open air all day since five o'clock in the morning, I was safe, in all probability, for the night, and robbers or no robbers, I felt I might as well have a sound night's rest and see what the situation looked like in the morning. I heard afterwards there were missionaries in the town, and had I known it, I might have sought them out and taken counsel with men of my own colour, but I did not know it. " Must have soldier," repeated Tuan emphatically, standing beside my camp bed. " How many soldier Missie want? " I had heard too many stories of Chinese soldiers to put much reliance on them as protectors. I didn't know offhand how many I wanted. I was by no means sure that I wouldn't be just as safe with the robbers. One thing was certain, I couldn't go back within two days of my destination, besides for all I knew, the robbers were behind me. I put it to Tuan. 246 A WOMAN IN CHINA " Suppose I have no passport, what the Tutuh do then?" " Then," said my henchman emphatically, " he no care robber get Missie." Evidently the Tutuh meant well by me, so I said they might send a soldier for me to look at, at six o'clock next morning and then I would decide how many I would have, and feeling that at least I had eleven hours respite, I turned over and went to sleep. Punctually the soldier turned up. He was a good-tempered little man, all in blue a little darker than the ordinary coolie wears, over it he had a red sleeveless jacket marked with great black Chinese characters, back and front, a mob cap of blue was upon his head, over his eyes a paper lampshade ; he had a nice little sturdy pony, and, for all arms, a fly whisk! I didn't feel I could really be afraid of him, and I strongly suspected the robbers would thoroughly agree with me. " What's he for?" I asked Tuan. That worthy looked very grave. " Must take care," he replied with due deliberation. " Plenty robber. She drive away robber. How many soldier Missie have?" Well there was nothing for it but to face the danger, if danger there was. I don't know now if there was any. It is so difficult to believe that any unpleasant thing will happen to one. Again I reflected that there is no danger in China till the danger actually arrives, and then it is too late. What my guardian was to drive away robbers with I am sure I don't know, for I cannot see that the fly whisk STREET IN PA KOU. "CAVALRY." THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 247 would have been very effective. The " cartee men " were perfectly willing to go on, so I said I thought this warrior would be amply sufficient for all pur- poses, and we started. Everybody in Pa Kou keeps a lark, I should think, and every one of those larks were singing joyously as we left the town. Never have I heard such a chorus of bird song, and the morning was delightful. My guardian rode ahead, and for three hours as we jolted over the track, I kept a look-out for robbers, wondered what they would be like, and what I should do when we met, but the only things I saw were bundles of brushwood for the kitchen fires of Pa Kou, apparently walking thitherward on four donkey legs. They reassured me, those bundles of brushwood, they had such a peaceful look. Somehow I didn't think we were going to meet any robbers. Evidently Tuan and the " cartee men " came to the same conclusion, for, at the end of three hours, they came and said the soldier must be changed, did Missie want another? Missie thought she didn't, and the guard was dismissed, his services being valued at twenty cents. It was plenty, for he came, with beaming face, and bowed his thanks. That was the only time I had anything to do with soldiers on the journey, and I forgot all about him, hieroglyphics, lampshade, fly whisk, and all, till I found entered in the accounts, Tuan was a learned clerk and kept accounts : " Cavalry, twenty cents." Then I felt I had had more than my money's worth. The last night of my journey I spent at Liu Kou, the sixth valley, and the next morning the men made 248 A WOMAN IN CHINA tremendous efforts to hide all trace of the disaster that had befallen us on the way. I said it didn't matter, it could wait till we got to Jehol, but both Tuan and the " cartee men " were of a different opinion. Apparently they would lose face if they came to their journey's end in such a condition, and I had to wait while the cloth was taken off the back of the cart, and carefully put on in front, so that the broken wood was entirely concealed. Then, when everybody was satisfied that we were making at least a presentable appearance, we started. You see, I never appreciated the situation properly. To travel in a cart seemed to me so humble a mode of progression, that it really did not matter very much whether it were broken or not, indeed a broken cart seemed more to me like going the whole hog, and roughing it thoroughly while we were about it. But with the men it was different, a cart was a most dignified mode of conveyance, and to enter a big town in a broken one was as bad as travelling in a motor with all the evidences of a breakdown upon it, due to careless driving. And when I saw their point of view, of course I at once sat down on some steps and watched an old man draw water, and a disgusting-looking sow, who made me forswear bacon, attend to the wants of her numerous black progeny. Tuan passed the time by having a heated argu- ment with the landlord. The fight waxed furious, as I was afterwards told, regarding the hot water I had required for my bath, which was heated in a long pipe, like a copper drain-pipe, that was inserted in a hole by the k'ang fire. Fuel is scarce, and stern necessity has seen to it that these people get the THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 249 most they possibly can out of a fire. I hope Tuan paid him fairly, but of course I do not know, I parted with a dollar for the night's lodging and the little drop of hot water, for otherwise we carried our own fuel — charcoal — bought our provisions and cooked for ourselves, but we left that landlord protesting at the gate that he would never put up another foreigner. That last day's journey was, I think, the hardest day of all, or perhaps it was that I was tired out. There was a long, long mountain to be got over, the Hung Shih La, the Red Stone Rock, and we crossed it by a pass, the worst of many mountain passes we had come across. We climbed up slowly to the top and there was a tablet to the memory of the man who had repaired the road. What it was like before it was repaired I can't imagine, or per- haps it was not done very recently, say within a couple of hundred years, for the road was very bad. There is only room for one vehicle, and the carters raised their voices in a loud singsong, to warn all whom it might concern that they were occupying the road. What would happen if one cart entered at one end and another at the other I am sure I cannot imagine, for there seemed to be no place that I could see where they could pass each other, and I think it must be at least three steep miles long. I did not trust the carts. I walked. My faith in a Peking cart and mule had gone for ever, and if we had started to roll here, it seemed to me, we should not have stopped till we reached America or Siberia at least. So every step of the way I walked, and Tuan would have insisted that the carts come behind me. But here I put my foot down, etiquette or no etiquette I insisted they should go in front. I felt 250 A WOMAN IN CHINA it would be just as bad to be crushed by a falling cart as to be upset in it^ so they went on ahead, and when we met people, and we met a good many on foot, Tuan called out to them and probably explained that such was the foolish eccentricity of his Missie that, though she was rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and always travelled with two carts, she yet insisted upon walking down all the passes. It was worth it too, for the view was glorious, the sunlight, the golden sunlight of a Chinese afternoon, fell on range after range of softly rounded hills, the air was so clear that miles and miles away I could see their folds, with here and there a purple shadow, and here and there the golden light. And over all was the arc of the blue sky. Beautiful, most beau- tiful it was, and I was only regretful that, like so many of the beautiful things I have seen in life, I looked on it alone. I shall never look on it again. The journey is too arduous, too difficult, but I am glad, very glad indeed, that I have seen it once. But it was getting late. At the bottom of the pass I got into my cart, and was driven along a disused mountain torrent that occupied the bed of the valley under a line of trees just bursting into leaf. The shadows were long with the coming night, and at last we forded a shallow river and came into the dusty, dirty town of Cheng Teh Fu, an unwalled town beyond which is Jehol, the Hunting Palace of the Manchu Emperors. Here there were thousands of soldiers, not like my " cavalry," but modern, khaki-clad men like those in Peking, gathered together to go against the Mongols, for China was at war, and apparently was THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 251 getting the worst of it, and the air was ringing with bugle calls. And then Tuan and I had an argument. He wanted me to go to an inn. The streets were dusty, dirty, evil-smelling, I was weary to death, my dress had been rubbed into holes by the jolting of the cart, and my flesh rebelled at the very thought of a Chinese inn. But what was I to do? There were no Europeans in Jehol save the missionaries, and I was so very sure it was wasted labour to try and convert the Chinese it seemed unfair to go to the mission station. And then I suddenly felt I must speak to someone, must hear my own tongue again, must be sympath- ised with, by a woman if possible, and in spite of the protests of Tuan who saw all chance of squeeze at an end, I made them turn the mules' heads to the mission. There a sad, sweet-faced woman gave me, a total stranger, the kindest and warmest of welcomes, and I paid off the " cartee men." For sixty dollars they had brought me two hundred and eighty miles, mostly across the mountains, they had been honest, hard-working, attentive, patient, and good- tempered, and for a cumskaw of five dollars they bowed themselves to the ground. I know they got it, because I took the precaution to pay them myself, and as I watched them go away down the street I made a solemn vow that never again would I travel in the mountains, and never, never again would I submit myself to the tender mercies of a Peking cart. It is one of the things I am glad I have done, but I am glad also it is behind me with no necessity to do again. CHAPTER XIV " TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " Missionary compound — Prayer—Reputed dangers of the way— The German girl— Midwife— The Bible as a guide — " My yoke is easy, My burden is light " — A harem — Helping the sick and afflicted — A case of hysteria — Drastic remedies — Ensuring a livelihood — " Strike, strike " — Barbaric war-song — The Chinese soldier — The martyrdom of the Roman Catholic priest. AND with my entrance into that missionary com- pound I entered a world as strange to me as the Eastern world I had come across two continents to see. The compound is right in the heart of the town, and was originally a Chinese inn, built, in spite of the rigour of the climate, Chinese fashion, so that to go from one room to the other it was necessary to go out of doors. The walls looking on to the street were blank, except in the room I occupied, where was a small window, so high up I could not see out of it. How it must be to pass from one room to the other when the bitter winter of Northern China holds the mountains in its grip, I do not know. I walked in out of the unknown and there came forward to meet me that sad-looking woman with the soft brown eyes and bright red lips. Take me in, yes, indeed she would take me in. I was dusty, I was torn, and I think I was more weary than I 252 "TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 258 have ever been in my life, and she made me wel- come, made me lie down in a long chair, and had tea brought in. A tall buxom German girl entered, and then to my surprise, and not a little to my dis- comfort, my hostess bowed her head, and thanked God openly that I had come through the dangers of the way, and been brought safely to their compound ! For a moment it took my breath away, and so self- conscious was I, that I did not know which way to look. My father was a pillar of the Church of England, Chancellor of the Diocese in which we lived, and I had been brought up straitly in the fold, among a people who, possibly, felt deeply on occa- sion, but who never^ never would have dreamt of applying religion personally and openly to each other. Frankly I felt very uncomfortable after I had been prayed over, and it seemed a sort of bathos to go on calmly drinking tea and eating bread and jam. The German girl had just arrived, and they heard that the day after she had left Peking, the German Consul had sent round to the mission station, where she had been staying, to cancel her passport, and to say that on no account must she go to Jehol as the country was too disturbed. How- ever she and her escort, one of the missionaries, had come through quite safely, and the Tartar General in charge here had said she might stay so long as she did not go outside the boundaries of the town. But naturally, they were much surprised to see me, a woman and alone. I looked round the room, the general sitting- room, a bare stone-floored room, with a mat or two upon it, a little cane furniture, a photograph or two, and some texts upon the walls, a harmonium, a 254 A WOMAN IN CHINA couple of tables, and a book-case containing some very old-fashioned books, mostly of a religious tendency, and some stories fyy A.L.O.E. There was a time when I thought A.L.O.E.'s stories wonderful, and so I read one or two of them while I was here, and wondered what it was that had charmed me when I was eleven. The only other woman in that compound, beside my hostess, was the German girl who had come out to help. " I gave myself to the Lord for China," she said, and she spoke simply and quietly, as if she were saying the most natural thing in the world, as if there could be no doubt of the value of the gift — truly it was her all, she could not give more. And the Chinese did need her, I think — that is only my opinion — but not exactly in the way she counted most important. She had taken the precaution to become a midwife, and indeed she must be a god- send, for Chinese practices are crude and cruel in the extreme. It is the child that counts, the mother, even in her hour of travail, must literally make no moan. A woman once told me how she went to see her amah, who was expecting a baby, and she was asked to wait. She waited about an hour, for she was anxious about the woman, and the room was very still, there was no sound till the silence was broken by the first cry of the new-born infant. The child had been born behind the screen while she waited, and an hour later, to her horror, the white-faced young mother was up and preparing to cook the family evening meal. The woman would not have cried out for the world. No Chinese woman would. If poor human flesh is weak, and a "TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " 255 sigh of pain escape her, her mother-in-law will cover her mouth with her hand, but mostly the woman will gag herself with her long black hair, she will not disgrace herself by a cry as long as her senses are with her. It is all very well to say the Chinese do not suffer as white women suffer. They are not like the sturdy negro women who have lived a primitive, open-air life, walk like queens, and have exercised every muscle. They are the crippled products of an effete civilisation, who spend long hours on the k'ang, and go as little as possible from their own compound. To those women that German girl will be a blessing untold. I think of their bodies while she labours for their souls. Anyway she is surely sent by God. There were two men here to make up the comple- ment, one was my missionary's husband, a man who takes the Bible for his guide in everything, the Bible as it is translated into the English tongue. He does not read primarily for the beauty of the language, for the rhythm, for the poetry, for the Eastern glamour that is over all. He reads it, he would tell you himself, for the truth. It is to him the most impor- tant thing in the world ; he quotes it, he lives by it, it is never out of his thoughts, he might be a Cove- nanter of old Puritan days. And the fourth mission- ary is a man of the world. I don't think he realises it himself, but he is. He had lived there many years, had married a wife and brought up children there, and now had sent them home to be educated, and he himself talked, not of the Bible, though I doubt not he is just as keen as the other, but of the people, and their manner of life, and their customs, of the country, and of the strangers he had 256 A WOMAN IN CHINA met, the changes he had seen, and, when I questioned him, of the escape of himself and his family from the Boxers. For the souls and bodies of these wretched, miser- able, uncomprehending Chinese, who very likely, at the bottom of their hearts, pity the strangers because they were not born in the Flowery Land, these devoted people work — work and pray— day and night. The result is not great. " They will not hear the truth. Their eyes are blind. They worship idols," they told me of the majority. But they give kindliness, and in all probability, for it is seldom that faithful, honest kindliness fails in its purpose, they make a greater impression than they or I realise. True they believe firmly in the old Hebrew idea of a " jealous God," but they themselves are more tender than the God they preach. For all of them, it seemed to me, life is hard, unless they have greater joy in the service than I , " a Greek " could understand, but for the older woman it must be hardest of all. " My yoke is easy, My burden is light," said the Master she followed, but the burden of this woman, away up in the mountains of Northern China, is by no means light. The community is so small, they do not belong to the China Inland Mission but call themselves "The Brethren," the nearest white man is two days away hard travelling across the moun- tains, so that perforce the life is lonely. Day in and day out they must live here for seven years among an alien people ; a people who come to them for aid and yet despise them. And because they would put no more stumbling-blocks in the way of "TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 257 bringing the Chinese to listen to the message they bring, these missionaries conform, as much as they can, to Chinese custom. Very seldom does this woman walk abroad with her husband — it would not be the thing — women and men do not walk together in China. If she goes outside the missionary com- pound she must be accompanied by another woman, and she puts on some loose coat, because the Chinese would be shocked at any suggestion of the outline of a figure. Also she looks neither to the right nor the left, and does not appear to notice anything, because a well-behaved woman in China never looks about her. She considers, too, very carefully her goings, she would not walk through the town at the hour when the men are going about their business, the hour that I found the most interesting, and invariably chose, no boy may bring her tea to her bedroom — it would not be right — and she has none of the arrogance of the higher race who think what they do must be right and expect the natives of the land to fall into line. No, she conforms, always conforms to the uncomfortable customs of the Chinese, and when any man above the rank of the poorest comes to call upon her husband, she and the girl are hustled out of the way and are as invisible as if he kept a harem. It often occurred to me that the Chinese thought he did. Even in the church the women are screened off from the men, and if a man adheres to the customs of the country so closely in everything they can see, it is natural to suppose they will give him credit for adhering to them in all things. But they must think, at least, he has selected his womenkind with a view to their welfare^ for the older woman has had 258 A WOMAN IN CHINA a little medical training, and simple cases of sickness she can deal with, while the German girl, as I have said, is a certified midwife. The other man too, though not a doctor, has some little knowledge of the more simple eye diseases. And they are grateful, the poor Chinese, for the sympathy they get from these kindly missionaries, who openly say they tend their poor bodies because they feel that so only can they get at their souls. They come to the little dispensary in crowds, come twenty miles over the mountains, and they bring there the diseases of a slum people, coughs and colds, pleurisy and pneumonia, internal complaints and the diseases of filth — here in the clean mountains — itch and the like. Many have bad eyes, many granulated lids., and there is many a case of hideous goitre. While I was there a man, old and poor, tramped one hundred miles across the mountains ; he was blind, with frightfully granulated lids, and he had heard of the skill of the missionaries. There are also well- to-do people here, who sometimes seek aid from them, though as a rule, it is the lower class they come in contact with. But the ailments of the rich are different. I remember my missionary woman was called in to see a girl about twenty, the daughter of a high-class Manchu. The girl had hiccough. It came on regu- larly about four o'clock every afternoon, and con- tinued, if I remember rightly, three or four hours. She was well and strong, she had everything the heart of a Chinese woman could desire, she was never required to do one stroke of work, but she was not married. The Manchus have fallen on evil times and find some difficulty in marrying their "TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 259 daughters. So this girl, the daughter of well-to-do people, was necessary to no one, not even to herself, and the missionary, finding she spent the greater part of her time lying idly upon the k'ang, diag- nosed hysteria, and prescribed a good brisk walk every day. The proud Manchu, who was her mother, looked at the woman she had called in to help her, scornfully. "My daughter," she said drawing herself up to her full height, and the Manchus are tall women, " cannot walk in the streets. It would not be seemly." The missionary looked at her a little troubled. " At least," she said^ " she can walk in the court- yard and play with her brother's children." But the girl looked at her with weary eyes. There was no excitement in playing with her brother's children, and she could not see the good to be got out of walking aimlessly round the courtyard. Poor Manchu maid ! What had she expected ? " If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? " " I could do no good," said the missionary sorrow- fully, " and they would not listen to my message." The Chinese have their own remedies for many diseases, and some of them the missionaries told me were good, but many were too drastic, and many were wickedly dangerous. When an eye is red and bloodshot for instance, they will break a piece of crockery and pierce the eye with it, and in all prob- ability the unfortunate loses his sight. No wonder they come miles and miles, however rough the way, to submit themselves to gentler treatment. I have known even women with bound feet toil twenty miles 260 A WOMAN IN CHINA to see them about some ailment. Of course their feet are not as badly bound as some, for there are many women in China who cannot walk at all. I talked with a man once who told me he had just been called upon to congratulate a man because he had married a wife who could not get across the room by herself. She, naturally, was a lady with slaves to wait upon her. These Chinese women of the mountains of the poorer classes — the Manchus do not bind their feet — must be able to move about a little, for there is a certain amount of work they must do. " A hundred thousand medical missionaries," said this man, " are wanted in China, for the teeming population suffers from its ignorance, it suffers because it is packed so tightly together; the women suffer from the custom that presses so heavily, and it suffers from its own dirt." Up here at Jehol the suffering is apparently as bad as anywhere, and the dispensary is full with all the minor ailments that come within the range of the missionaries' simple skill, and all the cruel diseases that are quite beyond them, that they can- not touch, and they do their best in all pity and love, and yet think that they are doing a greater thing than binding up a man's wounds when they can induce him to come to their prayer-meetings, which go along, side by side, with the dispensary. I, a heathen and a "Greek," question whether the Chinese ever receives Christianity. A Chinese gentleman, a graduate of Cambridge, once told me he did not think he ever did. " But the Chinaman," said he, he actually used the contemned word, *"' is a practical man, he receives all faiths. Some may be right, and when he thinks .. TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " 261 he is dying, he will send for a priest of every faith he knows of to help him across the dark river. Who knows, some of them may chance to be right," and he laughed. He himself was of the faith so many of us of this modern world have attained to, seeing the good in so many faiths, seeing the beauty and the pity of them and standing aside and crying : " Why all this? Whither are we bound? What can it matter whether this poor coolie believes in Christ, or Buddha, or the cold ethics of Confucius?" I said this to my missionary woman one day and she looked at me with horror in her eyes. " There will be a reaping some day," she said. " Where will you be then?" " Surely I cannot be blamed for using the reason- ing powers God has given." But I am sure she thought my reasoning powers came from the devil, and if I hadn't been getting used to it I should have been made uncomfortable by being prayed for as one in outer darkness. It is the worship of the ancestors that holds the Chinese, the man who gives up that, gives up all family ties and becomes practically an outcast. There may be a few genuine Christians, but in proportion to the money spent upon their conver- sion, their number must be very small. I saw the colporteur come into the compound one day, and they told me he was an earnest Christian. He might be, but again that doubt arose in my mind. If the receiving of Christianity ensures a livelihood, could you expect one of a nation, who will be made a eunuch for the same reason, to reject it. The missionaries had a hard time when first they came here. The place is inhabited by Manchus, 262 A WOMAN IN CHINA full of the pride of race, and they do not want the outsider. They use them, as they have effected a settlement, but they do not approve of their being there. As I and my saintly missionary walked down the street, she carefully avoiding a glance either to the right or the left, a little half-naked child ;at his mother's side looked at her and cried aloud : :' Ta, ta," and he said it vehemently again and again. She stopped, spoke to the mother, and evidently remonstrated, and the woman laughed and passed along on her high Manchu shoes without correcting the child. She looked troubled. "What did he say?" I asked. " Strike, strike ! or some people might say ' kill, kill ! ' I said to the woman : ' What bad manners is this?' And the woman had only laughed! After all her kindness and tenderness, all her consideration and care ; I should have thought the very children would have worshipped the ground she walked upon. They are holding their own, they say. In the compound are a couple of Chinese women, the wives of their teachers or servants, and they have had to unbind their feet, a process almost as painful as the binding. One old woman could not unbind hers, they told me, because so long had they been bound the feet split when she attempted to walk upon them unbound, but so true a Christian is she, she puts her tiny feet inside big shoes. But to balance her, their amah, a Manchu, is still a heathen. After the MANCHU WOMAN AND CHILD IN MISSIONARY COMPOUND. MANCHU AND CHINESE WOMEN IN MISSIONARY COMPOUND.